,loh  11  I''.  I  .u  rki ]>...!  r. 


PUBLISHER'S 
CONFESSION 


J~M 


U-V 


NEW   YORK 
DOUBLEDAY,   PAGE  &  CO. 

i9oS 


y 


Copyright,  1905,  by 
DOUBLEDAY,  PAGE  &  CO. 

Published  March,  IQ05 


SRL8 
URl 

h\ 

CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I    The  Ruinous  Policy  of  Large  Royal- 
ties       3 

II     Why    "Bad"     Novels    Succeed    and 

"Good  "Ones  Fail       .        .        .        .27 
III     Are  Authors  an  Irritable  Tribe  ?      .     45 
IV     Has  Publishing   Become  Commercial- 
ized ? 61 

V     Has  the  Unknown  Author  a  Chance?    79 
VI     The  Printer  Who  Issues  Books  at  the 

Author's  Expense      .        .        .         -99 
VII     The  Advertising  of  Books  Still  Ex- 
perimental   115 

VIII     The  Story  of  a  Book   from   Author 

to  Reader 131 

IX     The     Present    Limits    of    the    Book 

Market 147 

X     Plain   Words    to   Authors   and    Pub- 
lishers          163 


/ 


PUBLISHERS'  NOTE 

There  is  expressed  in  these  chapters 
so  much  that  is  practical  and  of  interest 
to  those  engaged  in  the  various  branches 
of  authorship,  book-making  and  book- 
selling that  the  present  publishers  have 
availed  themselves  of  the  permission  of 
the  Boston  Transcript,  in  which  they 
originally  appeared,  to  gather  them  to- 
gether in  book  form. 

New  York,  March,  1905. 


The   Ruinous  Policy  of  Large 
Royalties 


A   Publisher's   Confession 


CHAPTER    I 

THE   RUINOUS   POLICY   OF  LARGE 
ROYALTIES 

How  it  Operates  to  the  Disadvantage  of  Both  Au* 
thor  and  Publisher — The  Actual  Facts  and  Fig- 
ures— Authors'  Earnings  Greatly  Exaggerated 
by  the  Press — Books  Sell  Too  Cheaply — What 
a  Fair  Price  for  All  Concerned  Would  Be. 

The  author  of  a  very  popular  book, 
who  has  written  another  that  will  be  as 
popular,  wishes  me  to  publish  it,  so  he 
is  kind  enough  to  say;  and  he  came  to 
see  me  and  asked  on  what  terms  I 
would  bring  it  out.  In  these  strenuous 
times  he  can  dictate  his  own  terms  to 
his  publisher;  and  I  happened  to  know 
that  two  houses  had  made  him  offers. 


/ 


4     A   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

I  confess,  since  I  am  old-fashioned, 
that  this  method  of  an  author  shocks 
me.  If  he  does  not  openly  hawk  his 
book  and  his  reputation,  he  at  least 
tempts  one  publisher  to  bid  against 
another,  and  thus  invites  the  publisher 
to  regard  it  as  a  mere  commodity.  But 
I  suppressed  my  dislike  of  the  method 
and  went  straight  about  the  business  of 
getting  the  book,  for  I  should  like  to 
have  it. 

" I  will  give  you,"  I  said,  "  twenty  per 
cent,  royalty,  and  I  will  pay  you  $5,000 
on  the  day  of  publication." 

The  words  had  not  fallen  from  my 
mouth  before  I  wished  to  recall  them, 
for  the  publishing  of  books  cannot  be 
successfully  done  on  these  terms.  There 
are  only  two  or  three  books  a  year  that 
can  pay  so  much. 

"I  will  consider  it,"  said  he. 

Abject  as  I  was,  I  recovered  myself 
far  enough  to  say:  "No,  the  offer  is 
made  for  acceptance  now  or  never — 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION      5 

before  this  conversation  ends.    I  cannot 
keep  it  open." 

"My  dear  sir,"  I  went  on,  for  I  was 
regaining  something  of  my  normal  cour- 
age, "do  you  know  what  twenty  per 
cent,  royalty  on  a  $1.50  book  means? 
You  receive  thirty  cents  for  every  copy 
sold.  My  net  profit  is  about  four  or  five 
cents  a  copy,  if  I  manufacture  it  well 
and  advertise  it  generously;  and  I  sup- 
ply the  money  in  advance.  I  make  an 
advance  to  you;  I  pay  the  papermaker 
in  advance  of  my  collections,  the  printer 
— everybody ;  and  I  wait  from  ninety  to 
one  hundred  and  twenty  days  after  the 
book  is  sold  to  get  my  money.  My 
profit  is  so  small  that  it  may  vanish  and 
become  a  loss  by  any  misadventure, 
such  as  too  much  advertising,  the  print- 
ing of  too  large  an  edition,  or  the  loss  of 
an  account  with  a  failed  bookdealer.  I 
have  no  margin  as  an  insurance  against 
accidents  or  untoward  events.  I  am 
doing  business  with  you  on  an  unfairly 


6     A   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

generous  basis.  I  am  paying  you  all  the 
money  that  the  book  can  earn — perhaps 
more  than  it  can  earn — for  the  pleasure 
of  having  you  on  my  list.  If  I  make 
money,  I  must  make  it  on  books  for 
which  I  pay  a  smaller  royalty." 

"  But  I  can  get  twenty  per  cent,  from 
almost  any  other  publisher,"  he  replied, 
truthfully.  "Why  should  I  consider 
less  from  you?" 

I  could  not  answer  him  except  by 
saying : 

"Yes,  I  am  not  blaming  you — not 
quite;  but  there  is  a  grave  fault  in  the 
system  that  has  brought  about  this  gen- 
eral result.  You  may  have  forgotten 
that  this  high  royalty  is  a  direct  tempta- 
tion to  a  publisher  to  skimp  his  adver- 
tising. You  expect  generous  advertis- 
ing of  the  book.  Well,  I  can  never  sign 
an  order  for  an  advertisement  of  it  with- 
out recalling  the  very  narrow  margin  of 
profit  that  I  have.  An  order  for  $500 
worth  of  advertising  will  take  as  much 


A   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION      7 

net  profit  as  I  can  make  on  several  thou- 
sand copies. 

"Again,  when  I  come  to  manufacture 
the  book,  I  cannot  help  recalling  that 
gilt  letters  on  the  cover  will  increase  the 
cost  by  one  cent  or  two  cents  a  copy. 
You  tempt  me  to  do  all  my  work  in  the 
cheapest  possible  way." 

Well,  we  are  good  friends,  this  writer 
and  I,  and  we  signed  the  contract.  He 
is  to  receive  a  royalty  of  twenty  per 
cent.,  and  a  payment  on  his  royalty 
account  of  $5,000  on  the  day  of  publi- 
cation. 

When,  therefore,  I  had  the  pleasure  of 
receiving  the  friends  of  another  author, 
who  told  me  that  he  would  give  me  the 
book  for  twenty  ■  per  cent,  royalty 
($5,000  cash  on  publication)  if  I  cared  to 
read  it,  I  replied,  "No." 

NO    MONEY    ON    THAT   BASIS 

I  had  recovered.  I  said:  "I  cannot 
make   money   on   that   basis.     Neither 


8     A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

can  other  legitimate  and  conscientious 
publishers,  who  build  their  business  to 
last.  I  will  let  novels  alone,  if  I  must. 
I  will  do  a  small  business — but  sounder. 
If  that  is  your  condition,  do  not  leave 
the  book.  I  will  pay  you  a  sliding  scale 
of  royalties:  I  cannot  give  you  twenty 
per  cent." 

And  he  went  away.  I  had  just  as  lief 
another  publisher  lost  money  on  the 
book  as  to  lose  it  myself.  True,  the 
public,  the  reading  public  and  the  writ- 
ing public,  will  regard  the  success  of  the 
book  (if  it  succeed)  as  evidence  of  a  rival 
publisher's  ability  and  enterprise.  He 
will  win  temporary  reputation.  He  will 
seem  to  be  in  the  "  swim ' '  of  success .  He 
will  publish  naming  advertisements,  in 
the  hope  of  obtaining  other  successful 
authors;  and  he  will  attract  them,  for 
much  book  advertising  is  done  not  with 
the  hope  of  selling  the  book,  but  chiefly 
to  impress  writers  with  the  publisher's 
energy  and  generosity.     But  there's  no 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION     9 

profit  and  great  risk  in  business  con- 
ducted in  this  way. 

There  is  positive  danger,  in  fact. 
And  I  owe  it  to  myself  and  to  all  the 
men  and  women  whose  books  I  publish 
to  see  to  it  first  of  all  that  my  own  busi- 
ness is  sound,  and  is  kept  sound.  In  no 
other  way  can  I  discharge  my  obliga- 
tions to  them  and  keep  my  publishing 
house  on  its  proper  level  instead  of  on 
the  level  of  a  mere  business  shop. 

The  rise  of  royalties  paid  to  popular 
authors  is  the  most  important  recent 
fact  in  the  publishing  world.  It  has 
not  been  many  years  since  ten  per  cent, 
was  the  almost  universal  rule ;  and  a  ten 
per  cent,  royalty  on  a  book  that  sells 
only  reasonably  well  is  a  fair  bargain 
between  publisher  and  author.  If  the 
publisher  do  his  work  well — make  the 
book  well,  advertise  it  well,  keep  a  well- 
ordered  and  well-managed  and  energetic 
house — this  division  of  the  profits  is  a 
fair  division — except  in  the  case  of  a 


io   A   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

book  that  has  a  phenomenally  large 
sale.  Then  he  can  afford  to  pay  more. 
Unless  a  book  has  a  pretty  good  sale,  it 
will  not  leave  a  profit  after  paying  more 
than  a  ten  per  cent,  royalty. 

Figure  it  for  yourself.  The  retail 
price  of  a  novel  is  $1.50.  The  retail 
bookseller  buys  it  for  about  ninety 
cents.  The  wholesale  bookseller  buys  it 
from  the  publisher  for  about  eighty 
cents.  This  eighty  cents  must  pay  the 
cost  of  manufacturing  the  book ;  of  sell- 
ing it;  of  advertising  it;  must  pay  its 
share  towards  the  cost  of  keeping  the 
publisher's  establishment  going — and 
this  is  a  large  and  increasing  cost;  it 
must  pay  the  author ;  and  it  must  leave 
the  publisher  himself  some  small  profit. 
Now,  if  out  of  this  eighty  cents  which 
must  be  divided  for  so  many  purposes, 
the  author  receives  a  royalty  of  twenty 
per  cent,  (thirty  cents  a  copy),  there  is 
left,  of  course,  only  fifty  cents  to  pay  all 
the  other  items.     No  other  half-dollar 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    n 

in  this  world  has  to  suffer  such  careful 
and  continuous  division!  I  have  met 
a  good  many  authors  who  have  never 
realized  that  a  ten  per  cent,  royalty 
means  nearly  twenty  per  cent,  on  what 
the  publisher  actually  sells  the  book  for, 
and  that  a  twenty  per  cent,  royalty  is 
nearly  forty  per  cent,  on  the  actual 
wholesale  price. 

There  are  several  things  of  greater 
importance  in  the  long  run  to  an  author 
than  a  large  royalty.  One  of  them  is  the 
unstinted  loyalty  of  his  publisher.  His 
publisher  must  have  a  chance  to  be  gen- 
erous to  his  book.  He  ought  not  to  feel 
that  he  must  seek  a  cheap  printer,  that 
he  must  buy  cheap  paper,  that  he  must 
make  a  cheap  cover,  that  he  must  too 
closely  watch  his  advertising  account. 
A  publisher  has  no  chance  to  be  gener- 
ous to  a  book  when  he  can  make  a  profit 
on  it  only  at  the  expense  of  its  proper 
manufacture.  The  grasping  author  is, 
therefore,  doing  damage  to  his  own  book 


12   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

by  leaving  the  publisher  no  margin  of 
profit. 

THE   STABILITY   OF   THE    PUBLISHER 

There  is  still  another  thing  that  an 
author  should  set  above  his  immediate 
income  from  any  particular  book;  and 
that  is  the  stability  of  his  publisher. 
The  publisher  is  a  business  man  (he  has 
need  to  be  a  business  man  of  the  highest 
type) ,  but  he  is  also  the  guardian  of  the 
author's  property.  If  his  institution  be 
not  sound  and  be  not  kept  sound,  the  loss 
to  the  author  in  money  and  in  standing 
may  be  very  great.  The  embarrassment 
or  failure  of  a  publishing  firm  now  and 
then  causes  much  gossip ;  for  a  publishing 
house  is  a  center  of  publicity.  But  no- 
body outside  the  profession  knows  what 
practical  trouble  and  confusion  and  loss 
every  failure  or  financial  embarrassment 
costs  the  writing  world.  The  normal 
sale  of  many  books  is  stopped.     The 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    13 

authors  lose  in  the  end,  and  they  lose 
heavily. 

Every  publisher  who  appreciates  his 
profession  tries  to  make  his  house  per- 
manent, with  an  eye  not  only  to  his  own 
profit,  but  also  to  the  service  that  he 
may  do  to  the  writers  on  his  list.  If  it  is 
of  the  very  essence  of  banking  that  a 
bank  shall  be  in  sound  condition  and 
shall  have  the  confidence  of  the  com- 
munity, it  is  even  more  true  that  a  pub- 
lishing house  should  be  sound  to  the 
core  and  should  deserve  financial  con- 
fidence. The  publisher  must  do  his 
business  with  reference  to  a  permanent 
success.  But  if  he  must  do  business  on 
the  basis  of  a  twenty  per  cent,  royalty, 
he  takes  risks  that  he  has  no  right  to 
take.  It  deserves  to  be  called  "wild- 
cat" publishing. 

I  am,  therefore,  not  making  a  plea,  by 
this  confession,  for  a  larger  profit  to  the 
publisher  in  any  narrow  or  personal 
sense.      Every    successful    publisher — 


14   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

really  successful,  mind  you — could  make 
more  money  by  going  into  some  other 
business.  I  think  that  there  is  not  a 
man  of  them  who  could  not  greatly  in- 
crease his  income  by  giving  the  same 
energy  and  ability  to  the  management 
of  a  bank,  or  of  some  sort  of  industrial 
enterprise.  Such  men  as  Mr.  Charles 
Scribner,  Mr.  George  Brett,  Mr.  George 
H.  Mifflin,  could  earn  very  much  larger 
returns  by  their  ability  in  banks,  rail- 
roads or  manufacturing,  than  any  one 
of  them  earns  as  a  publisher;  for  they 
are  men  of  conspicuous  ability. 

It  is,  therefore,  not  as  a  matter  of 
mere  gain  to  the  publisher  that  it  is  im- 
portant to  have  the  business  on  a  sound 
and  fair  basis ;  but  it  is  for  the  sake  of 
the  business  itself  and  for  the  sake  of  the 
writers  themselves. 

AN   AUTHOR'S    BLUNDER 

Here  is  a  true  tale  of  a  writer  of  good 
fiction:     He   made   a   most   promising 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    15 

start.  His  first  book,  in  fact,  caused  him 
to  be  sought  by  several  publishers,  who 
do  not  hesitate  to  solicit  clients — a 
practice  that  other  dignified  professions 
discourage.  The  publisher  of  his  first 
book  gave  him  a  ten  per  cent,  royalty. 
For  his  second  book  he  demanded  more. 
A  rival  publisher  offered  him  twenty 
per  cent.  The  second  book  also  suc- 
ceeded. But  the  author  in  the  mean- 
time had  heard  the  noise  of  other 
publishing  houses.  He  had  made  the 
acquaintance  of  another  writer  whose 
books  (which  were  better  than  his)  had 
sold  in  much  greater  quantities.  Of 
course,  the  difference  in  sales  could  not 
be  accounted  for  by  the  literary  quali- 
ties of  the  books — his  friend  had  a  bet- 
ter publisher  than  he — so  he  concluded. 
His  third  book,  therefore,  was  placed 
with  a  third  publisher,  because  he 
would  advertise  more  loudly.  Well, 
that  publisher  failed.  His  failure,  by 
the  way,   the  report  of  the  receivers 


1 6   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

showed,  was  caused  by  spending  too 
much  in  unproductive  advertising. 

Here  our  author  stood,  then,  with 
three  books,  each  issued  by  a  different 
publishing  house.  What  should  he  do 
with  his  fourth  book?  He  came  back  to 
his  second  publisher,  who  had,  natur- 
ally, lost  some  of  his  enthusiasm  for  such 
an  author.  To  cut  the  story  short,  that 
man  now  has  books  on  five  publishers' 
lists.  Not  one  of  the  publishers  counts 
him  as  his  particular  client.  In  a  sense 
his  books  are  all  neglected.  One  has 
never  helped  another.  He  has  got  no 
cumulative  result  of  his  work.  He  has 
become  a  sort  of  stray  dog  in  the  pub- 
lishing world.  He  has  cordial  relations 
with  no  publisher ;  and  his  literary  prod- 
uct has  really  declined.  He  scattered 
his  influence,  and  he  is  paying  the 
natural  penalty. 

The  moral  of  this  true  story  (and  I 
could  tell  half  a  dozen  more  like  it)  is 
that  a  publisher  is  a  business  man,  but 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    17 

not  a  mere  business  man.  He  must  be 
something  more.  He  is  a  professional 
man  also.  He  can  do  his  best  service 
only  for  those  authors  who  inspire  his 
loyalty,  who  enable  him  to  make  his 
publishing  house  permanent,  and  who 
leave  him  enough  margin  of  profit  to 
permit  him  to  make  books  of  which  he 
can  be  proud. 

The  present  fashion  of  a  part  of  the 
writing  world — to  squeeze  the  last  cent 
out  of  a  book  and  to  treat  the  publisher 
as  a  mere  manufacturer  and  "boomer" 
— cannot  last.  It  has  already  passed 
its  high  period  and  is  on  the  decline.  A 
self-respecting  worm  would  have  turned 
long  ago.  Even  the  publisher  is  now 
beginning  to  turn. 

Better  still,  the  authors  whose  books 
will  be  remembered  longest  have  not 
caught  the  fashion  of  demanding  every- 
thing. It  was  that  passing  school  of 
"booms"  and  bellowing  that  did  it  all 
— the  writers  of  romances  for  kitchen 


1 8   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

maids  and  shop  girls,  whose  measure  of 
book  values  was  by  dollars  only.  Such 
fashions  always  pass.  For,  if  novel  writ- 
ing be  so  profitable  an  industry,  a  large 
number  of  persons  naturally  take  it  up ; 
and  they  ruin  the  market  by  overstock- 
ing it. 

THE   "BOOMED"   BOOK   PASSING 

Fast  passing,  then — praise  God — is 
the  "boomed"  book,  which,  having  no 
merit,  could  once  be  sold  by  sheer  adver- 
tising, in  several  editions  of  100,000  each. 
I  have  made  a  list  of  the  writers  of  books 
that  during  the  last  five  or  six  years 
have  sold  in  enormous  editions;  and 
every  one  of  these  writers,  but  two,  has 
lived  to  see  his  (or  her)  latest  book  sell 
far  below  its  predecessors.  One  man, 
for  instance,  wrote  a  first  book  which 
sold  more  than  200,000  copies.  His 
publishers  announce  only  the  sixtieth 
thousand  of  his  latest  novel,  though  it 
has  now  nearly  run  its  course. 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    19 

These  are  not  pleasant  facts.  I  wish 
that  every  novelist  might  have  an  in- 
creasing sale  for  every  book  he  writes. 
They  all  earn  more  than  they  receive — 
even  the  bad  ones  whose  books  prosper ; 
but  the  system  that  they  brought  with 
them  deserves  to  die — must  die,  if  pub- 
lishing is  to  remain  an  honorable  pro- 
fession. They  brought  with  them  the 
20  per  cent,  royalty,  and  the  demand  for 
an  advertising  outlay  that  was  based  on 
the  sale  of  100,000  or  200,000  copies. 
Only  the  keeper  of  dark  secrets  knows 
how  many  publishers  have  lost,  or  how 
large  their  losses  have  been,  on 
"boomed"  books.  But  any  intelligent 
business  man  may  take  the  50  cents 
that  the  publisher  receives  for  his  $1.50 
novel  after  paying  the  author's  20  per 
cent,  royalty,  and  divide  it  thus : 

Cost  of  manufacture, 

Cost  of  selling, 

Office  expense, 

Extravagant  advertising, 


2o  A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

Profit. 

If  he  can  find  anything  left  for  profit, 
then  he  can  get  rich  at  any  business. 
There  have  been  novels  so  extravagantly 
advertised  that  the  advertising  cost 
alone  amounted  to  22  cents  for  every 
copy  sold.  The  writer  drove  the  pub- 
lisher to  loss;  the  publisher  (foolishly) 
consented  in  the  hope  of  attracting 
other  authors  to  his  house.  If  "other 
authors"  knew  that  the  very  cost  of  the 
bait  that  attracted  them  makes  the 
publishing  house  unsound,  they  would 
not  long  be  fooled. 

Thus  it  comes  about,  in  this  strange 
and  fascinating  world  of  writing  and 
making  and  selling  books,  that  one 
period  of  "whooping  up"  novels  is  end- 
ing. Half  the  novels  advertised  during 
the  past  few  years  in  big  medicine  style 
did  not  pay  the  publishers;  and  any 
conservative  publisher  can  tell  you 
which  half  they  are. 

The  manufacturing  novelist  has  al- 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    21 

ways  been  with  us.  But  he  used  to  be 
an  humble  practitioner  of  the  craft 
whose  "  output "  was  sold  for  ten  cents  a 
volume.  He  always  will  be  with  us,  and 
his  product  will  sell,  some  at  ten  cents  a 
volume,  some  at  $1.50.  But  the  time 
seems  about  to  pass  when  he  can  disturb 
the  publishing  situation.  For  the  pub- 
lisher has  to  accept  his  methods  when  he 
accepts  his  work;  and  his  methods  do 
not  pay  either  in  dignity,  permanency, 
or  cash.  If  any  of  these  be  lacking — 
and  in  proportion  as  they  are  lacking — 
the  results  will  fall  short  of  the  ideal. 
The  results  to  be  hoped  for  are  money, 
but  not  money  only,  but  also  a  watchful 
care  by  the  publisher  over  his  author's 
reputation  and  growth,  and  a  cumula- 
tive influence  for  his  books. 

THE  INCOME  OP  AUTHORS 

There  are,  perhaps,  a  dozen  American 
novelists  who  have  large  incomes  from 
their  work;    there  are  many  more  who 


22    A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

have  comfortable  incomes ;  but  there  is 
none  whose  income  is  as  large  as  the 
writers  of  gossip  for  the  literary  journals 
would  have  us  believe.  It  has  been 
said  that  Harper's  Magazine  pays  Mrs. 
Humphry  Ward  $15,000  for  the  serial 
right  of  each  of  her  stories  and  twenty 
per  cent,  royalty.  Miss  Johnston  must 
have  made  from  $60,000  to  $70,000 
from  royalties  on  "To  Have  and  to 
Hold,"  for  any  publisher  can  calculate 
it. 

But  along  with  these  great  facts  let  us 
humbly  remember  that  Mr.  Carnegie 
received  $300,000,000  for  all  his  steel 
mills,  good  will,  etc. ;  for  the  authors 
that  I  have  named  are  the  "million- 
aires" of  the  craft.  I  wish  there  were 
more.  But  the  diligent  writers  of  most 
good  fiction,  hard  as  they  have  ground 
the  publishers  in  the  rise  of  royalties, 
are  yet  nearer  to  Grub  street  than  they 
are  to  Skibo  Castle. 

The  truth  is — but  it  would  be  a  dim- 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    23 

cult  task  to  reduce  such  a  truth  to  prac- 
tice— that  the  public  gets  its  good  new 
novels  too  cheap.  There  is  not  a  large 
enough  margin  of  profit  for  author,  pub- 
lisher and  bookseller  in  a  new  book  that 
is  meant  to  be  sold  for  $1.50  and  that  is 
often  sold  for  $1.08.  The  business  of 
bookmaking  and  bookselling  is  under- 
paid. There  is  not  a  publisher  in  the 
United  States  who  is  today  making  any- 
large  sum  of  money  on  his  "general 
trade."  Money  is  made  on  educational 
books,  on  subscription  books,  on  maga- 
zines. But  publishing,  as  publishing,  is 
the  least  profitable  of  all  the  professions, 
except  preaching  and  teaching,  to  each 
of  which  it  is  a  sort  of  cousin. 


Why  "  Bad  "  Novels  Succeed  and 
"Good"   Ones  Fail 


CHAPTER   II 

WHY   "BAD"   NOVELS    SUCCEED   AND 
"GOOD"  ONES  FAIL 

The  First  May  Have  No  Literary  Quality,  but 
They  Have  a  Genuine  Quality — Power  of  Con- 
struction the  Main  Thing  hi  Story-Writing — 
Literary  Reviews  of  Novels  are  Regarded  as  of 
Little  Value  by  Publishers — Odd  Incidents  and 
Facts  in  the  Business. 

A  report  on  the  manuscript  of  a  novel 
made  by  a  "literary"  reader  not  long 
ago  ended  with  this  sentence:  "This 
novel  is  bad  enough  to  succeed."  He 
expressed  the  feeling  of  a  great  many 
literary  persons  that  fiction  often  suc- 
ceeds in  the  market  in  proportion  to  its 
" badness."  And  surely  there  are  many 
instances  to  support  such  a  contention 
from  the  "Lamplighter"  to  "When 
Knighthood  Was  in  Flower."     But  the 

27 


28   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

"literary"  view  of  fiction  is  no  more 
trustworthy  than  the  "literary"  view 
of  politics  or  of  commerce;  for  it  con- 
cerns itself  more  with  technique  than 
with  substance. 

It  is  a  hard  world  in  which  "  Knight- 
hood," "Quincy  Adams  Sawyer"  and 
"Graustark,"  to  say  nothing  of  "The 
One  Woman,"  "  Alice  of  Old  Vincennes  " 
and  a  hundred  more  "poor"  books 
make  fortunes,  while  Mr.  Howells  and 
Mr.  James  write  to  unresponsive  mar- 
kets and  even  Mr.  Kipling  cannot  find 
so  many  readers  for  a  new  novel  as  Mr. 
Bacheller  of  "  Eben  Holden."  It  seems 
a  hard  world  to  the  professional  literary 
folk;  but  the  professional  literary  folk 
would  find  it  a  hard  world  anyhow ;  for 
it  has  a  way  of  preferring  substance  to 
color.  And  novels,  after  all,  have  less 
to  do  with  literature  than  they  have  to 
do  with  popular  amusement. 

Heaven  forbid  that  I  should  make  de- 
fence of  bad  writing,  or  of  sensational 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    29 

literature,  or  of  bad  taste,  or  of  any- 
other  thing  that  is  below  grade ;  but,  as 
between  the  professional  literary  class, 
and  the  great  mass  of  men  who  buy 
"  Eben  Holdens"  and  "  David  Harums" 
the  mass  of  men  have  the  better  case. 

Why  does  a  man  read  a  novel?  Let 
us  come  down  to  common  sense.  He 
seeks  one  of  two  things — either  a  real 
insight  into  human  nature  (he  got  that 
in  "David  Harum")  or  he  seeks  diver- 
sion, entertainment.  A  writer's  style 
is  only  a  part  of  the  machinery  of  pre- 
sentation. The  main  thing  is  that  he  has 
something  to  present.  Even  though  I 
am  a  publisher  I  think  that  I  know 
something  about  literary  quality  and 
literary  values,  and  it  must  be  owned  at 
once  that  hardly  one  in  a  dozen  of  the 
very  popular  recent  novels  has  any 
literary  quality.  But  every  one  of 
them,  nevertheless,  has  some  very  gen- 
uine and  positive  quality.  They  were 
not  written  by  any  trick,  and  their  pop- 


30  A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

ularity  does  not  make  the  road  to  suc- 
cess any  easier  to  find.  They  have 
qualities  that  are  rarer  than  the  merely 
literary  quality.  Mr.  Henry  James's 
novels  have  what  is  usually  called  the 
literary  quality.  Yet  half  the  publish- 
ing houses  in  the  United  States  have  lost 
money  on  them,  while  the  publisher  and 
the  author  of  "Richard  Carvel"  and 
"The  Crisis"  and  "The  Crossing"  made 
a  handsome  sum  of  money  from  these 
books,  which  have  no  literary  style. 

This  does  not  mean  a  whining  confes- 
sion that  "literature"  does  not  pay. 
For  my  part  I  cannot  weep  because  Mr. 
James  and  Mr.  Howells  do  not  find  many 
readers  for  their  latest  books.  They 
find  all  they  deserve.  Mere  words  were 
never  worth  much  money  or  worth 
much  else.  But,  while  Mr.  Churchill  is 
not  a  great  writer  (since  he  has  no  style) , 
and  while  few  persons  of  the  next  gen- 
eration of  readers  (whereby  I  mean 
those  of  year  after  next)  are  going  to 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION   31 

take  the  trouble  to  read  his  books,  yet, 
for  all  that,  they  have  a  quality  that  is 
very  rare  in  this  world,  a  quality  that 
their  imitators  never  seem  to  see.  They 
have  construction.  They  have  action. 
They  have  substance.  A  series  of 
events  come  to  pass  in  a  certain  order, 
by  a  well-laid  plan.  Each  book  makes 
its  appeal  as  a  thing  built,  finished, 
shapen,  if  not  well-proportioned,  sub- 
stantial. It  is  a  real  structure — not  a 
mere  pile  of  bricks  and  lumber.  The 
bricks  and  lumber  that  went  into  them 
are  not  as  fine  nor  as  good  as  somebody 
else  may  have  in  his  brickyard  and  his 
lumber  pile.  But  they  are  put  together. 
A  well  shapen  house  of  bad  bricks  is  a 
more  pleasing  thing  than  any  mere 
brick-pile  whatever. 

I  recall  this  interesting  experience  of  a 
man  whose  novels  are  now  fast  winning 
great  popular  favor.  He  sat  down  and 
wrote  a  story  and  sent  it  to  a  publisher. 
It  was  declined.     He  sent  it  to  another. 


32    A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

Again  it  was  declined.  Then  he  brought 
it  to  me.  (He  told  me  of  the  preceding 
declinations  a  year  later).  I  told  him 
frankly  that  it  lacked  construction.  I 
supposed  that  that  was  the  last  that  I 
should  see  of  him.  But  about  a  year 
later  he  came  again  with  another  manu- 
script and  with  this  interesting  story. 

"Like  a  fool,"  said  he,  "I  simply 
blazed  away  and  wrote  what  I  supposed 
was  a  novel.  Nobody  would  publish  it. 
When  you  said  that  it  lacked  construc- 
tion, I  went  to  work  to  study  the  con- 
struction of  a  novel.  I  analyzed  twenty. 
I  found  a  dozen  books  on  the  subject 
which  gave  me  some  help.  But  there 
are  few  books  that  do  help.  I  con- 
structed a  sort  of  method  of  my  own." 

That  man  yet  has  no  sense  of  literary 
values,  as  they  are  usually  considered. 
The  only  good  quality  of  his  style  is  its 
perfect  directness  and  clearness.  He 
writes  blunt,  plain  sentences.  But  every 
one  of  them  tells  something.     He  does 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION   33 

not  bother  himself  about  style,  nor 
about  literary  quality.  He  fixes  his 
mind  on  the  story  itself,  to  see  that  it 
has  substance,  form,  action,  proportion. 
And  he  worked  out  this  new  novel  with 
these  qualities  in  it. 

It  was  a  dime  novel  in  praise  of  one  of 
the  cardinal  Christian  virtues — very 
earnest,  very  direct.  But  the  persons  in 
it  were  real.  They  not  only  said  things, 
they  did  things ;  and  many  of  the  things 
they  did  were  interesting.  One  of  our 
salesmen  was  asked  to  read  the  manu- 
script. "  It'll  sell,"  said  he.  Our  liter- 
ary adviser  said  that  it  was  a  bald  moral 
Sunday  school  play.  "  You  could  put  it 
on  the  stage  by  cutting  it  here  and 
there,"  he  declared.  "But  it  has  no 
literary  quality."  Both  were  right. 
The  book  has  sold  well.  It  has  amused 
and  interested  its  tens  of  thousands. 

The  author's  next  book  after  that  was 
very  much  better.  Having  learned 
something  of  the  art  of  construction  he 


34   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

began  to  think  of  such  a  detail  as  style. 
He  re-wrote  the  book  to  make  it 
"smooth."  But  the  point  is,  he  first 
paid  attention  to  his  construction  and 
made  sure  that  he  had  a  story  to  tell. 

The  enormous  amount  of  waste  work 
done  by  unsuccessful  novel  writers  is 
done  without  taking  the  trouble  first  to 
make  sure  that  they  have  a  story  to  tell. 

Few  persons  have  any  constructive 
faculty.  This  is  the  sad  fact  that  comes 
home  at  last  to  a  man  who  has  read 
novels  in  manuscript  for  many  years. 
A  publisher  comes  to  look  for  construc- 
tion in  a  novel  before  he  looks  for  style 
or  literary  quality. 

This  confession  is  enough  to  provoke 
the  literary  journals  to  condemn  the 
publishers  as  mere  mercenary  dealers  in 
sensational  books.  Yet,  while  a  book 
that  is  well  constructed  may  not  be 
"literature,"  very  few  books  have  a 
serious  chance  to  become  literature  un- 
less they  have  good  construction. 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    35 

I,  for  one,  and  I  know  no  publisher 
who  holds  a  different  opinion,  care  noth- 
ing for  the  judgment  of  the  professional 
literary  class.  Their  judgment  of  a 
novel,  for  instance,  is  of  little  value  or 
instruction.  It  may  be  right — often  it 
is.  It  may  be  wrong.  But  whether 
right  or  wrong  (and  there  is  no  way  that 
I  know  to  determine  finally  whether  any 
judgment  be  right  or  wrong)  it  is  of  no 
practical  value.  A  literary  judgment 
of  a  new  novel  cannot  affect  the  judg- 
ment that  men  will  form  of  it  ten  years 
hence.  Therefore  it  is  of  no  permanent 
value.  Neither  can  it  affect  the  sales  of 
a  new  novel.  It  is  therefore  of  no  prac- 
tical importance  for  the  moment.  I  look 
upon  reviews  of  novels  as  so  much  pub- 
licity— they  have  value,  as  they  tell  the 
public  that  the  book  is  published  and 
can  be  bought,  and  as  they  tell  some- 
thing about  it  which  may  prod  the  read- 
er's curiosity.  Further  than  this  they 
are  of  no  account.    Not  one  of  the  three 


36   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

publishers  whose  personal  habits  I  know 
as  a  rule  takes  the  trouble  to  read  the 
reviews  of  novels  of  his  own  publishing. 

Novel  making,  then,  is  an  industry, 
and  the  people  who  make  them  best  con- 
cern themselves  very  little  about  what 
is  usually  meant  by  "literary  values," 
and  very  little  about  their  popularity. 
The  writers  who  deliberately  set  out  to 
write  novels  of  great  popularity  have 
almost  always  missed  it.  The  industry 
is  an  art,  also,  but  it  is  not  an  art  of 
mere  fine  writing.  It  is  chiefly  an  art  of 
construction — an  art  of  putting  things 
in  due  proportion.  This  assumes,  of 
course,  that  the  novelist  has  things  to 
put. 

The  truth  is,  the  delicate  and  difficult 
art  of  finding  out  just  what  the  public 
cares  for — the  public  of  this  year  or  the 
public  of  ten  years  hence — has  not  been 
mastered  by  many  men,  whether  writ- 
ers or  publishers.  If  you  find  out  what 
the  great  public  of  today  wants,  you  are 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION   37 

a  sensationalist.  If  you  find  out  what 
the  great  public  of  ten  or  twenty  years 
hence  will  want,  you  are  a  maker  or  a 
publisher  of  literature.  And  the  public 
of  the  future  is  pretty  sure  to  want 
something  different  from  the  public  of 
today. 

Within  six  months  after  the  publica- 
tion of  a  popular  novel  the  publisher  of 
it  (other  publishers,  too)  will  receive  a 
dozen  or  a  hundred  stories  that  have 
been  suggested  by  it.  Many  an  author 
of  such  a  manuscript  will  write  that  he 
has  discovered  the  secret  of  the  popular 
book's  success  and  that  he  has  turned  it 
to  profit  in  his  own  effort.  Such  letters 
are  singularly  alike.  The  writers  of 
them  regard  success  as  something  won 
by  a  trick,  as  a  game  of  cards  might  be 
won.  These  remind  one,  too,  of  the  ad- 
vertisements of  patent  medicines — ex- 
cept that  the  writers  of  them  are  sincere. 
They  believe  heartily  in  their  discovery. 
Thus  every  very  popular  novel  gives  a 


38  A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

great  stimulus  to  the  production  of 
novels.  "To  Have  and  To  Hold" 
brought  cargoes  of  young  women  for 
colonists'  wives  to  hundreds  of  amateur 
story  writers. 

But  stranger  than  the  popularity  of 
very  popular  novels,  or  than  the  utter 
failure  of  merely  "literary"  novels,  is 
the  moderate  success  of  a  certain  kind  of 
commonplace  stories.  I  know  a  woman 
of  domestic  tastes  who  every  two  years 
turns  off  a  quiet  story.  She  has  now 
written  a  dozen  or  more.  They  are  never 
advertised.  But  they  are  well  printed 
and  put  forth  by  one  of  our  best  pub- 
lishers. The  "literary"  world  pays  no 
heed  to  her.  Her  books  are  not  even 
reviewed  in  the  best  journals.  They  lack 
distinction.  But  every  one  is  sure  to 
sell  from  ten  to  fifteen  thousand  copies. 
No  amount  of  advertising,  no  amount  of 
noise  could  increase  the  number  of  read- 
ers to  twenty-five  thousand;  and  there 
is  no  way  to  prevent  a  sale  of  from  ten 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION   39 

to  fifteen  thousand  copies.  Why  this  is 
so  is  one  of  the  most  baffling  problems  of 
psychology.  But  it  is  the  rule.  Authors 
of  novels  are  known  and  rated  among 
publishers  as  ten  thousand,  or  twenty- 
five  thousand,  or  fifty  thousand,  or  one 
hundred  thousand  writers.  Book  after 
book  reaches  a  certain  level  of  popular- 
ity and — stops.  Mr.  Marion  Crawford, 
Mr.  Hopkinson  Smith,  Miss  Wilkins — 
all  these  have  their  more  or  less  con- 
stant levels. 

The  lay  world  has  no  idea  of  the  num- 
ber of  novels  that  fail.  There  are  one- 
book  authors  all  over  the  country.  The 
publishers'  hope  always  is  that  a  new 
writer  who  makes  a  pretty  good  novel 
will  do  better  next  time.  Thus  the  first 
book  is  accepted  for  the  sake  of  the  next 
one.  The  first  fails,  and  the  second  is 
not  wanted.  There  are  dozens  and 
dozens  of  such  cases  every  year.  The 
public  doesn't  know  it,  for  the  very 
abyss  of  oblivion  is  the  place  where  a 


40   A   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

dead  novel  falls.  Nobody  knows  it — 
that  is  the  tragedy — but  the  publishers 
and  the  author. 

A  case  came  to  light  a  little  while  ago 
of  a  man  who  had  years  ago  written 
novels  that  failed.  He  had  been  forgot- 
ten. But  he  took  a  new  start.  Yet  he 
feared  that  his  first  failures  would  damn 
him  with  the  publishers.  He  took 
another  name,  therefore.  Not  even  his 
publishers  knew  who  he  really  was.  He 
succeeded  and  he  concealed  his  identity 
until  he  died. 

The  publisher's  loss  on  an  unsuccess- 
ful novel  may  be  little  or  big.  All  pub- 
lishers lose  much  on  unsuccessful  ven- 
tures in  fiction,  chiefly  on  young  authors 
who  are  supposed  to  have  a  future,  or  on 
old  authors  who  have  a  "  literary  "  repu- 
tation and  have  reached  that  ghostly 
period  of  real  decline  when  they  walk  in 
dreams  from  one  publishing  house  to 
another. 

But  there  is  generally  a  reason  for 


A   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    41 

success  or  for  failure.  The  trouble  is 
that  the  reason  often  does  not  appear 
soon  enough.  The  chief  reason  for  the 
success  of  a  novel  is  the  commonplace 
one  that  it  contains  a  story.  It  may 
be  told  ill  or  it  may  be  told  well,  but 
there  is  a  story.  And  the  chief  reason 
for  failure  is  the  lack  of  a  story.  A  novel 
may  be  ever  so  well  written, — if  it  have 
no  story,  the  public  will  not  care  for  it. 

I  wonder  if  there  be  any  light  in  this 
very  obvious  discovery.  Simple  as  it 
seems,  it  costs  every  publishing  house 
a  pretty  penny  every  year  to  find  it  out ;. 
and  as  soon  as  we  find  it  out  about  one 
writer  we  forget  it  about  another !  It  is 
a  great  truth  that  does  not  remain  dis- 
covered. 


Are  Authors  an  Irritable  Tribe  ? 


CHAPTER   III 

ARE    AUTHORS    AN    IRRITABLE   TRIBE? 

An  Emphatic  Answer  in  the  Negative — They  Are 
Gentlemen  and  Ladies  and  Treat  Their  Pub- 
lisher with  Courtesy — Bonds  of  Friendship 
Thus  Formed  That  Endure — Some  Amusing 
and  Nettling  Exceptions — Cranks  Among  the 
Scholars — The  Inconstant  Author  Who  Is  Al- 
ways Changing  Publishers — Why  a  Publishing 
Trust  Is  Impossible. 

The  old  and  persistent  notion  that  the 
writers  of  books  are  an  irritable  tribe, 
hard  to  deal  with,  and  manageable  only 
by  flattery — if  it  was  ever  true,  is  not 
true  now.  During  an  experience  of  a 
good  many  years  I  have  suffered  a  dis- 
courtesy from  only  two.  Both  these 
were  "philosophers" — not  even  poets, 
nor  novelists.  They  wrote  books  that 
the  years  have  proved  are  dull;    and, 

45 


46   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

when  it  became  my  duty  to  disappoint 
them,  although  I  hope  I  did  it  courte- 
ously, they  wrote  ill-tempered  letters. 
The  hundreds  of  other  writers  of  all  sorts 
that  I  have  had  the  pleasure  to  deal  with 
have  conducted  themselves  as  men  and 
women  of  common  sense,  and  most  of 
them  are  men  and  women  of  very  un- 
usual attractiveness.  I  doubt  whether  a 
man  of  any  other  calling  has  the  privi- 
lege of  dealing  with  persons  of  such 
graciousness  and  of  such  consideration. 

But  the  women  who  write  require 
more  attention  than  the  men.  Their 
imaginations  are  more  easily  excited  by 
the  hope  of  success,  and  few  of  them 
have  had  business  experience.  They 
want  to  be  fair  and  appreciate  frank 
dealing.  Yet  they  like  to  have  every- 
thing explained  in  great  detail. 

One  woman,  now  one  of  our  most 
successful  novelists — successful  both  as 
a  writer  of  excellent  books  and  as  an 
earner    of    a    good    income — was    kind 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    47 

enough  to  seek  my  advice  about  one  of 
her  early  novels.  It  was  a  book  that  she 
ought  not  to  have  written;  the  subject 
was  badly  chosen.  I  frankly  told  her  so. 
The  whole  reading  world  has  told  her  so 
since.  But  naturally  she  did  not  agree 
with  me.  She  took  the  book  to  another 
publisher.  Two  years  passed.  She  had 
a  second  novel  ready.  This  was  one  of 
the  best  American  stories  of  a  decade. 
To  my  great  gratification  I  received  a 
letter  from  her  one  day  asking  if  I  cared 
to  read  it.     Of  course  I  said  yes. 

Then  came  another  telling  how  she 
had  never  changed  her  opinion  of  her 
former  book — not  a  jot — I  must  under- 
stand that  thoroughly.  If  that  were 
clearly  understood  she  went  on  to  say 
she  would  like  to  have  me  publish  the 
new  book  on  two  conditions:  (1)  That 
I  should  myself  read  it  immediately  and 
say  frankly  what  I  thought  of  it,  and  (2) 
that  I  should  pay  her  a  royalty  large 
enough  to  repair  her  wounded  feelings 


48    A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

about  the  former  book.  Subsequently 
she  added  another  condition — 

"You  may  publish  it,"  she  said,  "if 
you  heartily  believe  in  the  book." 

Very  shrewdly  said — that  "heartily 
believe  in  the  book."  For  the  secret  of 
good  publishing  lies  there.  There  are 
some  books  that  a  publisher  may  suc- 
ceed with  without  believing  in  them — a 
dictionary  or  a  slapdash  novel,  for  ex- 
amples. But  a  book  that  has  any  ster- 
ling quality — a  real  book — ought  never 
to  have  the  imprint  of  a  publisher  who  is 
not  really  a  sharer  of  its  fortunes,  a  true 
partner  with  the  author.  For  only  with 
such  a  book  can  he  do  his  best. 

I  did  believe  in  this  book.  As  soon  as 
it  was  in  type  I  required  every  man  in 
my  office  who  had  to  do  with  it  to  read 
it — the  writer  of  "literary  notes,"  the 
salesman  and  even  the  shipping  clerk. 
When  the  author  next  called  I  introduced 
to  her  all  these.  They  showed  their 
enthusiasm.     She  was  convinced.     The 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    49 

book  succeeded  in  the  market  almost 
beyond  her  expectations.  It  is  a  good 
book.  Everyone  of  us  believes  in  it  and 
believes  in  her. 

She  is  not  a  crank,  "  but  only  a  wo- 
man." We  have  our  reward  in  her 
friendship  and  she  is  generous  enough  to 
think  that  we  have  done  her  some  ser- 
vice. We  esteem  it  a  high  privilege  to  be 
her  publishers. 

But  God  save  me  from  another  wo- 
man who  has  won  a  conspicuous  success 
in  the  market.  The  first  question  she 
ever  asked  me  was : 

"Are  you  a  Christian?" 

"  Do  I  look  like  a  Jew  or  a  Mohamme- 
dan?" I  asked. 

She  never  forgave  me.  Her  novel  had 
a  great  religious  motive.  It  sold  by  the 
tens  of  thousands  and  most  maudlin 
emotionalists  in  the  land  have  read  it. 
But  I  do  not  publish  it.  To  do  so,  I 
should  have  had  to  pay  the  price  of 
being  "converted."     Now  this  lady  is 


So   A   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

a  crank.  But  it  is  not  fair  to  call  her 
books  literature. 

The  veriest  crank  of  all  is  our  great 
scholar.  It  is  an  honor  to  publish  the  re- 
sults of  his  scholarship  (few  parsnips  as 
it  butters),  for  the  man's  work  is  as  at- 
tractive as  he  is  odd.  He  thinks  himself 
the  very  soul  of  fairness.  Yet  he  comes 
at  frequent  intervals  wishing  so  to 
change  his  contract  as  to  make  publish- 
ing his  books  an  even  more  expensive 
luxury  than  it  was  before.  A  contract 
is  to  him  a  thing  to  make  endless  ex- 
periments with.  When  we  were  once 
driven  to  desperation,  one  of  my  asso- 
ciates suggested  that  we  propose  half  a 
dozen  unimportant  changes  in  it,  on  the 
theory  that  change — any  change — was 
all  he  wanted.  It  was  an  inspired  sug- 
gestion. A  great  scholar,  a  restless 
child.  But  some  day  (we  feel)  he  will 
break  over  all  traces,  and  we  are  all  afraid 
of  him. 

But  very  sane  and  sensible  men  and 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    51 

women  are  most  of  those  who  succeed 
in  winning  the  public  favor.  Some  are 
grasping,  as  other  men  are.  One,  for  in- 
stance, whose  book  had  earned  $7,000  in 
two  years,  demanded  a  prepayment  of 
$8, 000  for  the  next  book.  A  compro- 
mise was  made  on  $2 ,000 !  That  was  the 
measure  of  my  folly,  for  the  book  is 
waning  in  its  popularity  and  has  hardly 
earned  this  prepaid  royalty. 

An  author  came  to  my  office  one  day 
indignant  because  his  novel  was  not 
more  extensively  advertised.  There  was 
the  usual  explanation — it  would  not 
pay.  He  had  money  to  spare  and  he 
proposed  to  advertise  it  himself.  He 
wrote  the  advertisements,  he  selected 
the  journals  in  which  the  advertise- 
ments should  appear,  and  he  inserted 
them — $1,000  worth. 

By  some  strange  fate  the  sales  of  the 
book  began  just  then  greatly  to  decline. 
They  have  kept  declining  since,  and  why 
nobody  can  tell.      When  the  public  has 


52   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

bought  a  certain  number  of  copies  of  a 
novel — of  one  novel  it  may  be  1,000 
copies,  of  another  100,000  copies — there 
is  nothing  that  can  be  done  to  make 
it  buy  another  1,000  or  100,000.  It 
seems  to  know  when  it  has  enough. 
Take  more  it  will  not.  The  worst 
"crank"  that  any  publisher  ever  en- 
countered is  not  an  author;  it  is  the 
public,  unreasoning,  illogical,  uncon- 
vincible,  stolid! 

Odd  persons  are  found  in  every  craft. 
But  I  think  that  there  are  fewer  odd  ones 
among  successful  writers  than  among 
successful  lawyers,  for  instance.  And 
this  is  what  one  would  naturally  expect, 
but  for  the  traditional  notion  that  writ- 
ers are  unbalanced.  Who  else  is  so  well 
balanced  as  the  writer  of  good  books? 
He  must  have  sanity  and  calmness  and 
judgment,  a  sense  of  good  proportion,  an 
appreciation  of  right  conduct  and  of  all 
human  relations,  else  he  could  not  make 
books  of  good  balance  and  proportion. 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION   53 

Most  writers  have  few  financial  deal- 
ings, and  they  often  innocently  pro- 
pose impracticable  things.  But  this  is 
not  a  peculiar  trait  of  writers.  Most 
preachers  and  many  women  show  it.  I 
have  known  a  successful  college  presi- 
dent, for  instance,  to  cut  a  paragraph 
out  of  a  proof  sheet  with  a  pair  of  scis- 
sors, imagining  that  this  would  cause  it 
to  be  taken  out  by  the  printers. 

They  are  appreciative,  too ;  and  they 
make  the  most  interesting  friends  in  the 
world.  Almost  all  writers  of  books  work 
alone.  Lawyers  work  with  clients  and 
with  associated  and  opposing  lawyers. 
Even  teachers  have  the  companionship 
of  their  pupils  in  the  work.  Men  of  most 
crafts  work  with  their  fellows,  and  they 
forget  how  much  encouragement  they 
owe  to  this  fellowship.  A  dreary  task  is 
made  light  by  it  and  monotonous  labor 
is  robbed  of  its  weariness.  But  the 
writer  works  alone. 

Almost  the  first  man  to  be  taken  into 


54-4   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

his  confidence  about  his  work  is  his  pub- 
lisher. If  the  publisher  be  appreciative 
and  sympathetic  and  render  a  real  ser- 
vice, how  easily  and  firmly  the  writer  is 
won.  A  peculiarly  close  friendship  fol- 
lows in  many  cases — in  most  cases,  per- 
haps, certainly  in  most  cases  when  the 
author's  books  are  successful. 

And  this  is  why  a  great  publishing 
trust,  or  "merger"  is  impossible.  The 
successful  publisher  sustains  a  relation 
to  the  successful  author  that  is  not  easily 
transferable.  It  is  a  personal  relation. 
A  great  corporation  cannot  take  a  real 
publisher's  place  in  his  attitude  to  the 
authors  he  serves. 

This  is  the  reason,  too,  why  the 
"authors'  agents"  seldom  succeed  in 
raising  the  hopes  of  unsuccessful  writ- 
ers. As  soon  as  a  writer  and  a  publisher 
have  come  into  a  personal  relation  that 
is  naturally  profitable  and  pleasant,  a 
"go-between"  has  no  place.  There  is 
no  legitimate  function  for  him. 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    55 

Writers  are  as  constant  in  their  rela- 
tions as  other  men  and  women.  As  they 
acquire  experience,  they  become  more 
constant.  Every  one  for  himself  works 
his  way  to  this  conclusion — once  having 
an  appreciative  and  successful  publisher, 
it  is  better  to  hold  to  him.  And  the 
strong  friendships  that  grow  out  of  this 
relation  are  among  the  most  precious 
gains  to  each. 

One  publisher  said  to  another  the 
other  day:  "I  see  by  your  announce- 
ments that  one  of  my  authors  has  gone 
to  you — you  are  welcome." 

"Yes,"  was  the  reply,  "I  have  in  al- 
most every  instance  made  a  mistake 
when  I  have  taken  in  a  dissatisfied 
writer — one  cannot  make  lasting  friends 
with  them." 

Every  great  publishing  house  has  been 
built  on  the  strong  friendships  between 
writers  and  publishers.  There  is,  in  fact, 
no  other  sound  basis  to  build  on ;  for  the 
publisher  cannot  do  his  highest  duty  to 


56  A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

any  author  whose  work  he  does  not  ap- 
preciate, and  with  whom  he  is  not  in 
sympathy.  Now,  when  a  man  has  an 
appreciation  of  your  work  and  sym- 
pathy for  it,  he  wins  you.  This  is  the 
simplest  of  all  psychological  laws — the 
simplest  of  all  laws  of  friendship  and  one 
of  the  soundest. 

Those  who  know  the  personal  history 
of  the  publishing  houses  that  in  recent 
years  have  failed  or  met  embarrass- 
ments know  that,  in  most  cases,  one 
cause  of  decline  was  the  drawing  apart 
of  publishers  and  authors.  When  auth- 
ors begin  to  regard  their  publishers  as 
mere  business  agents,  and  publishers  to 
regard  authors  as  mere  "literary  men" 
with  whom  they  have  only  business 
relations,  the  beginning  of  a  decline  has 
come. 

I  recall  as  one  of  the  pleasantest  days 
of  my  life  the  day  on  which  I  accepted  a 
book  by  an  author  I  had  never  before 
seen.     So  pleasant  was  our  correspond- 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    57 

ence  that  I  took  the  first  occasion  I 
could  to  go  nearly  a  thousand  miles  to 
see  him.  In  his  own  house  we  talked 
about  his  literary  plans,  and  I  spent  a 
day  always  to  be  remembered.  Our 
friendship  began  then.  Of  course  I  was 
interested  in  his  work — you  cannot  long 
feign  an  interest  that  you  do  not  feel. 
This  friendship  has  lasted  now  long 
enough  to  make  it  very  much  more  se- 
cure a  bond  than  any  merely  commer- 
cial service  could  have  become. 

Every  publisher's  experience  is  the 
same — if  he  be  a  real  publisher  and  will 
long  remain  a  real  publisher.  Else  he 
would  be  only  a  printer  and  a  salesman, 
and  mere  printers  and  salesmen  have 
not  often  built  publishing  houses.  For 
publishing  houses  have  this  distinction 
over  most  other  commercial  institutions 
— they  rest  on  the  friendship  of  the  most 
interesting  persons  in  the  world,  the 
writers  of  good  books. 

The     more     formal     cultivation     of 


58  A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

friendly  relations  such  as  the  famous 
dinners  that  some  publishers  used  regu- 
larly to  give  to  writers  has  gone  out  of 
fashion.  There  are  yet  a  few  set  dinners 
in  the  routine  of  several  American  pub- 
lishing houses.  But  every  true  publisher 
knows  the  authors  of  his  books — knows 
them  as  his  friends ;  and  the  tradition  of 
irritability  is  false.  It  is  usually  the  un- 
successful who  are  irritable,  whether 
they  be  authors  or  not. 


Has  Publishing  Become  Commer- 
cialized ? 


CHAPTER   IV 

HAS   PUBLISHING   BECOME   COMMER- 
CIALIZED? 

A  Charge  Fairly  Met  and  Its  Truths  Admitted — 
Many  Features  of  the  Business  in  Which  a  Low 
Tone  Prevails — The  Literary  Solicitor  an  Ab- 
horrent Creature — On  the  Whole,  However, 
Commercial  Degradation  Prevails  Less  with 
Publishers  Than  in  Many  Other  Callings — The 
Confidence  Authors  Have  in  Them  Is  Their 
Best  Asset. 

Authorship  and  publishing — the 
whole  business  of  producing  contem- 
poraneous literature — has  for  the  mo- 
ment a  decided  commercial  squint.  It 
would  be  wrong  to  say,  as  one  some- 
times hears  it  said,  that  it  has  been  de- 
graded ;  for  it  has  probably  not  suffered 
as  nearly  a  complete  commercialization 
as  the  law  has  suffered,  for  instance. 
But  that  fine  indifference  to  commercial 

61 


62   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

results  which  was  once  supposed  to  be 
characteristic  of  the  great  publishers 
does  not  exist  today.  Perhaps  it  never 
existed  except  in  memoirs  and  literary 
journals!  But  there  was  a  less  obvious 
effort  to  make  money  in  the  days  of  the 
first  successful  American  publishing 
houses  than  there  is  now. 

The  old  publishing  houses  put  forth 
schoolbooks;  and  many  a  dignified 
literary  venture  was  "financed"  by 
money  made  from  the  sale  of  textbooks 
and  subscription  books.  But  now  the 
greater  part  of  the  money  made  from 
these  two  special  departments  is  made 
by  houses  that  publish  nothing  else. 
The  making  of  schoolbooks  and  the 
making  of  subscription-books  have  been 
specialized,  and  almost  separated  from 
general  publishing.  Two  great  textbook 
houses  have  made  large  incomes;  and 
they  publish  nothing  but  schoolbooks. 
These  profits,  which  were  once  at  the 
service  of  literature,  are  now  withdrawn 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION   63 

from  it.  The  "  general "  publisher  has  to 
make  all  his  profits  on  his  "general" 
books.  The  necessity  is  the  heavier  on 
him,  therefore,  to  make  every  book  pay. 
This  is  one  reason  why  the  general  pub- 
lisher has  to  watch  his  ledger  closely. 

Another  reason  for  greater  emphasis 
on  the  financial  side  of  literary  produc- 
tion is  the  enormously  increased  ex- 
pense of  conducting  a  general  publishing 
house.  The  mere  manufacture  of  books 
is  perhaps  a  trifle  cheaper  than  it  used  to 
be,  but  every  other  item  of  expense  has 
been  increased  enormously  within  a 
generation.  It  costs  more  to  sell  books 
than  it  ever  cost  before.  Advertising 
rates  have  been  doubled  or  trebled,  and 
more  advertising  must  be  done.  Even 
a  small  general  publishing  house  must 
spend  as  much  as  $30,000  or  $50,000  a 
year  in  general  advertising.  There  are 
many  houses  that  each  spend  a  great 
deal  more  than  this  every  year. 

The  author,  too,  it  must  be  remem- 


64  A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

bered,  has  become  commercial.  He  de- 
mands and  he  receives  a  larger  share  of 
the  gross  receipts  from  his  book  than 
authors  ever  dreamed  of  receiving  in  the 
days  of  the  old-time  publisher.  All  the 
other  expenses  of  selling  books  have  in- 
creased. There  was  a  time  when  pub- 
lishing houses  needed  no  travelling 
salesmen.  Now  every  house  of  any  im- 
portance has  at  least  two.  They  go 
everywhere,  with  "dummies"  and  pros- 
pectuses of  books  long  before  they  are 
ready  for  the  market.  Other  items  of 
"general  expense"  besides  advertising 
and  salesmen  and  ever-increasing  rent, 
are  the  ever-growing  demands  of  the 
trade  for  posters  and  circulars;  corres- 
pondence grows  more  and  more;  more 
and  more  are  special  "window  dis- 
plays" required,  for  which  the  publisher 
pays.  All  the  while,  too,  books  are  sold 
on  long  time.  As  a  rule  they  are  not  paid 
for  by  many  dealers  till  six  months  after 
they  are  manufactured. 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    65 

All  these  modern  commercial  methods 
have  added  to  the  publisher's  expense  or 
risk;  and  for  these  reasons  his  business 
has  become  more  like  any  other  manu- 
facturing business  than  it  once  seemed 
to  be — perhaps  more  than  it  once  was. 
Of  course  there  are  publishers — there 
always  were  such — who  look  only  to 
their  ledgers  as  a  measure  of  their  suc- 
cess. These  are  they  who  have  really 
demoralized  the  profession,  and  the 
whole  publishing  craft  has  suffered  by 
their  methods. 

It  was  once  a  matter  of  honor  that  one 
publisher  should  respect  the  relation 
established  between  another  publisher 
and  a  writer,  as  a  physician  respects  the 
relation  established  between  another 
physician  and  a  patient.  Three  or  four 
of  the  best  publishing  houses  still  live 
and  work  by  this  code.  And  they  have 
the  respect  of  all  the  book  world. 
Authors  and  readers,  who  do  not  know 
definitely  why  they  hold  them  in  esteem, 


66   A   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

discern  a  high  sense  of  honor  and  con- 
duct in  them.  Character  makes  its  way 
from  any  man  who  has  it  down  a  long 
line — everybody  who  touches  a  sterling 
character  comes  at  last  to  feel  it  both  in 
conduct  and  in  product.  The  very  best 
traditions  of  publishing  are  yet  a  part  of 
the  practice  of  the  best  American  pub- 
lishing houses,  which  are  conducted  by 
men  of  real  character. 

But  there  are  others — others  who  keep 
"  literary  drummers,"  men  who  go  to  see 
popular  writers  and  solicit  books.  The 
authors  of  very  popular  books  them- 
selves also — some  of  them  at  least — put 
themselves  up  at  auction,  going  from 
publisher  to  publisher  or  threatening  to 
go.  This  is  demoralization  and  com- 
mercialization with  a  vengeance.  But 
it  is  the  sin  of  the  authors. 

As  a  rule,  this  method  has  not  suc- 
ceeded; or  it  has  not  succeeded  long. 
There  are  two  men  in  the  United  States 
who  have  gone  about  making  commer- 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION   67 

cial  calls  on  practically  every  man  and 
woman  who  has  ever  written  a  success- 
ful book ;  and  they  are  not  well  thought 
of  by  most  of  the  writers  whom  they  see. 
Every  other  publisher  hears  of  their 
journeyings  and  of  their  "drumming." 
Sometimes  they  have  secured  immediate 
commercial  results,  but  as  a  rule  they 
have  lost  more  than  they  have  gained. 
The  permanent  success  of  every  publish- 
ing house  is  built  on  the  confidence  and 
the  esteem  of  those  who  write  books. 
When  a  house  forfeits  that,  it  begins  to 
lose.  Its  very  foundations  begin  to  be- 
come insecure. 

Commercial  as  this  generation  of  writ- 
ers may  be,  almost  every  writer  of  books 
has  an  ambition  to  win  literary  esteem. 
They  want  dignity.  They  seek  reputa- 
tion on  as  high  a  level  as  possible. 
"The  trouble  with  the  whole  business" 
(I  quote  from  a  letter  from  a  successful 
novelist)  "  is  that  novel- writing  has  be- 
come so  very  common.      'Common'  is 


68  A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

the  word.  It  is  no  longer  distinguished. 
What  I  want  is  distinction.  Money  I 
must  have — some  money  at  least;  but 
I  want  also  to  be  distinguished."  That 
is  a  frank  confession  that  almost  every 
writer  makes  sooner  or  later. 

Now,  when  a  publishing  house  forfeits 
distinction  it,  too,  becomes  common, 
and  loses  its  chance  to  confer  a  certain 
degree  of  distinction.  And  literary 
"drummers"  have  this  effect — authors 
who  can  confer  distinction  shun  their 
houses.  The  literary  solicitor,  therefore, 
can  work  only  on  a  low  level;  and  the 
houses  that  use  him  are  in  danger  of 
sinking  to  a  low  level. 

The  truth  is,  it  is  a  personal  service 
that  the  publisher  does  for  the  author, 
almost  as  personal  a  service  as  the  phy- 
sician does  for  his  patient  or  the  lawyer 
for  his  client.  It  is  not  merely  a  commer- 
cial service.  Every  great  publisher  knows 
this  and  almost  all  successful  authors 
find  it  out,  if  they  do  not  know  it  at  first. 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION   69 

The  ideal  relation  between  publisher 
and  author  requires  this  personal  ser- 
vice. It  even  requires  enthusiastic  ser- 
vice. "Do  you  thoroughly  believe  in 
this  book?  and  do  you  believe  in  me?" 
these  are  the  very  proper  questions  that 
every  earnest  writer  consciously  or  un- 
consciously puts  to  his  publisher.  Even 
the  man  who  writes  the  advertisements 
of  books  must  believe  in  them.  Else  his 
advertisements  will  not  ring  true.  The 
salesmen  must  believe  what  they  say. 
The  booksellers  and  the  public  will  soon 
discover  whether  they  believe  it.  They 
catch  the  note  of  sincerity — the  public 
is  won ;  the  author  succeeds.  Or  they 
catch  the  note  of  insincerity  and  the 
book  lags. 

This  is  the  whole  story  of  good  pub- 
lishing. Good  books  to  begin  with,  then 
a  personal  sincerity  on  the  part  of  the 
publisher.  And  there  is  no  lasting  sub- 
stitute for  these  things. 

The  essential  weakness  in  most  of  even 


70   A   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

the  best  publishing  houses  of  our  day  is 
the  lack  of  personal  literary  help  to 
authors  by  the  owners  of  the  publishing 
houses  themselves.  Almost  every  writer 
wishes  to  consult  somebody.  If  they  do 
not  wish  advice,  they  at  least  wish  sym- 
pathy. Every  book  is  talked  over  with 
somebody.  Now,  when  a  publishing 
house  has  a  head — an  owner — who  will 
read  every  important  manuscript,  and 
freely  and  frankly  talk  or  write  about  it, 
and  can  give  sympathetic  suggestions, 
that  is  the  sort  of  publishing  house  that 
will  win  and  hold  the  confidence  of  the 
best  writers.  From  one  point  of  view  the 
publisher  is  a  manufacturer  and  sales- 
man. From  another  point  of  view  he 
is  the  personal  friend  and  sympathetic 
adviser  of  authors — a  man  who  has  a 
knowledge  of  literature  and  whose  judg- 
ment is  worth  having.  A  publisher  who 
lacks  the  ability  to  do  this  high  and  inti- 
mate service  may  indeed  succeed  for  a 
time  as  a  mere  manufacturer  and  seller 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION   71 

of  books;  but  he  can  add  little  to  the 
best  literary  impulses  or  tendencies  of 
his  time;  nor  is  he  likely  to  attract  the 
best  writers. 

And — in  all  the  noisy  rattle  of  com- 
mercialism— the  writers  of  our  own  gen- 
eration who  are  worth  most  on  a  pub- 
lisher's list  respond  to  the  true  publish- 
ing personality  as  readily  as  writers  did 
before  the  day  of  commercial  methods. 
All  the  changes  that  have  come  in  the 
profession,  therefore,  have  not  after  all 
changed  its  real  character  as  it  is  prac- 
tised on  its  higher  levels.  And  this  rule 
will  hold  true — that  no  publishing  house 
can  win  and  keep  a  place  on  the  highest 
level  that  does  not  have  at  least  one  man 
who  possesses  this  true  publishing  per- 
sonality. 

There  is  much  less  reason  to  fear  the 
commercial  degradation  of  many  other 
callings  than  the  publishers'. 

A  louder  complaint  of  commercialism 
has   been   provoked   by  the   unseemly 


72   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

advertising  of  novels  than  by  any  other 
modern  method  of  publishers.  Now  this 
is  a  curious  and  interesting  thing.  A 
man  or  woman  writes  a  story  (let  us  call 
it  a  story,  though  it  be  a  mild  mush  of 
mustard,  warranted  to  redden  the  faded 
cheeks  of  sickly  sentimentality)  which, 
for  some  reason  that  nobody  can  ex- 
plain, has  the  same  possibilities  of  popu- 
larity as  Salvation  Soap.  A  saponace- 
ous publisher  puts  it  out ;  he  advertises 
it  in  his  soapy  way;  people  buy  it — 
sometimes  two  hundred  or  three  hun- 
dred thousand  of  them. 

Behold !  a  new  way  has  been  found  to 
write  books  that  sell,  and  a  new  way  to 
sell  them.  Hundreds  of  writers  try  the 
easy  trick.  Dozens  of  minor  publishers 
see  their  way  to  fortune.  But  the  trick 
cannot  be  imitated,  and  the  way  to 
fortune  remains  closed.  It  is  only 
now  and  then  that  a  novel  has  a  big 
"run"  by  this  method.  The  public 
does  not  see  the  hundreds  of  failures. 


A   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    73 

It  sees  only  the  occasional  accidental 
success. 

There  is  no  science,  no  art,  no  litera- 
ture in  the  business.  It  is  like  writing 
popular  songs:  One  "rag-time"  tune 
will  make  its  way  in  a  month  from  one 
end  of  the  country  to  the  other.  A  hun- 
dred tune-makers  try  their  hands  at  the 
trick — not  one  of  their  tunes  goes.  The 
same  tune-maker  who  "scored  a  suc- 
cess" often  fails  the  next  time.  There 
is,  I  think,  not  a  single  soap-novelist  who 
has  put  forth  a  subsequent  novel  of  as 
great  popularity  as  his  "record- 
breaker,"  and  several  publishing  houses 
have  failed  through  unsuccessful  efforts 
at  the  brass-band  method. 

This  is  not  publishing.  It  is  not  even 
commercialism.  It  is  a  form  of  gamb- 
ling. A  successful  advertising  "dodge" 
makes  a  biscuit  popular,  or  a  whiskey,  or 
a  shoe,  or  a  cigarette,  or  anything.  Why 
not  a  book,  then  ?  This  would  be  all  that 
need  be  said  about  it  but  for  the  "liter- 


74   A   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

ary"  journals.  They  forthwith  fall  to 
gossiping,  and  keep  up  a  chatter  about 
"great  sellers,"  and  bewail  commercial- 
ism in  literature,  until  we  all  begin  to 
believe  that  the  whole  business  of  book- 
writing  and  book-publishing  has  been 
degraded.  Did  it  ever  occur  to  you  that 
in  the  "good  old  days"  of  publishing 
there  were  no  magazines  that  retailed 
the  commercial  and  personal  gossip  of 
the  craft? 

As  nearly  as  I  can  make  out  the  pub- 
lishing houses  in  the  United  States  that 
are  conducted  as  dignified  institutions 
are  conducted  with  as  little  degrading 
commercialism  as  the  old  houses  whose 
history  has  become  a  part  of  English 
literature,  and  I  believe  that  they  are 
conducted  with  more  ability.  Certainly 
not  one  of  them  has  made  a  colossal  for- 
tune. Certainly  not  one  of  them  ever 
failed  to  recognize  or  to  encourage  a  high 
literary  purpose  if  it  were  sanely  di- 
rected.     Every  one  of  them  every  year 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION   75 

invests  in  books  and  authors  that  they 
know  cannot  yield  a  direct  or  immediate 
profit,  and  they  make  these  investments 
because  they  feel  ennobled  by  trying  to 
do  a  service  to  literature. 

The  great  difficulty  is  to  recognize 
literature  when  it  first  comes  in  at  the 
door,  for  one  quality  of  literature  is  that 
it  is  not  likely  even  to  know  itself.  The 
one  thing  that  is  certain  is  that  the  criti- 
cal crew  .and  the  academic  faculty  are 
sure  not  to  recognize  it  at  first  sight. 
To  know  its  royal  qualities  at  once  under 
strange  and  new  garments — that  is  to  be 
a  great  publisher,  and  the  glory  of  that 
achievement  is  as  great  as  it  ever  was. 


Has  the  Unkown  Author  a  Chance  ? 


CHAPTER  V 

HAS  THE  UNKNOWN  AUTHOR  A 
CHANCE? 

A  Popular  Illusion  Based  on  "Graustark"  and 
"David  Harum"  Dispelled — Publishers  Blunder 
More  Often  in  Welcoming  Than  in  Rejecting 
Manuscripts  of  the  "New  Man" — Guess  Work 
Enters  Largely  Into  the  Fate  of  a  Novel — How 
Publishers  ludge  Manuscripts  and  How  "  Read- 
ing "  Is  Done. 

It  will  probably  always  be  believed  by 
many  persons  that  publishing  houses  do 
not  give  careful  attention  to  book  manu- 
scripts that  come  from  strangers.  The 
case  of  "  David  Harum"  did  much  to  fix 
this  notion  in  the  public  mind.  The 
manuscript  was  declined  by  three  or 
four  publishers  before  it  was  accepted  by 
the  Appletons.  Its  declination  was  an 
evidence   of   bad   financial   book-judg- 

79 


80  A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

ment,  but  it  is  not  proof  that  it  was 
carelessly  considered.  Most  publishers' 
readers  are  literary  folk,  pure  and  sim- 
ple. Not  one  in  a  hundred  has  a  good 
financial  judgment  of  a  manuscript.  As 
a  literary  product,  judged  by  academic 
standards,  there  was  not  much  in  "  David 
Harum"  to  commend  it.  The  publish- 
ers who  rejected  it  acted  on  the  readers' 
reports.  When  it  went  to  the  Apple- 
tons,  somebody  was  shrewd  enough  to 
see  that  if  it  were  shortened  and  put  in 
somewhat  better  form,  it  would  have  a 
commercial  value.  A  publishing  judg- 
ment was  passed  on  it  there  and  not 
merely  a  conventional  literary  judg- 
ment. 

Or,  take  the  case  of  "  Graustark."  It 
was  declined  at  least  by  one  publisher. 
There  is,  perhaps,  not  a  "literary" 
reader  in  the  world  who  would  have 
commended  it  in  manuscript,  or  (for 
that  matter)  who  will  commend  it  now. 
It  does  violence  to  every  literary  canon. 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION   81 

But  a  Chicago  publisher,  by  some  divine 
or  subterranean  suggestion,  saw  a 
chance  for  it.  Its  roughest  edges  were 
hewn  off  with  an  axe,  and  it  was  put 
forth.  There  have  now  appeared  four 
"  Graustark  "  books,  three  of  which  have 
each  sold  perhaps  a  hundred  times  as 
many  copies  as  Mr.  Howell's  latest  novel 
will  sell. 

The  difference  between  a  mere  literary 
judgment  and  a  publishing  judgment  in- 
dicates the  greatest  weakness  in  the  or- 
ganizations of  most  publishing  houses. 
The  publisher  himself  is  usually  a  busi- 
ness man.  He  has  to  concern  himself 
with  the  financial  work  of  his  house — 
with  the  manufacture  and  the  sale  of 
books.  In  a  great  measure  he  relies,  for 
his  judgment  of  literary  values,  on  his 
advisers  and  readers.  As  a  rule  these 
advisers  and  readers  are  employed  men 
or  women.  They  know  nothing  about 
what  may  be  called  the  commercial 
value  of  books.      Many  of  them  know 


82  A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

nothing  about  the  losses  or  the  profits  on 
the  books  that  they  have  commended. 
They  have  had  no  experience  in  selling 
books.  These  facts  indicate  the  wrong 
organization  of  most  publishing  houses. 
Yet  the  faithfulness  that  they  show  to  as- 
piring authors  is  amazing;  they  plough 
conscientiously  through  thousands  of 
manuscripts  looking  for  the  light  of 
some  possible  genius,  and  they  com- 
mend dozens  of  books  where  their  em- 
ployers accept  a  single  volume. 

But  the  publisher  does  acquire  a  sort 
of  sixth  sense  about  a  book.  He  may  or 
he  may  not  know  literary  values,  but  he 
comes  to  have  a  peculiar  sort  of  knowl- 
edge of  the  commercial  possibilities  of 
books.  If  he  takes  "literary  read- 
ers'" judgments  and  does  not  read 
manuscripts  himself,  he  will  now  and 
then  let  a  "  David  Harum  "  pass  through 
his  hands.  To  avoid  such  mistakes 
every  publishing  house  has  at  least  two 
readers,  and  these  read  manuscripts  in- 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION   83 

dependently  of  one  another.  The  pub- 
lisher then  makes  his  judgment  from 
them  both,  or  perhaps  from  a  third  read- 
ing by  a  specialist,  if  the  manuscript 
seem  good  enough  to  warrant  a  third 
reading. 

The  mistake  of  permitting  a  profitable 
manuscript  to  be  rejected  does  not  come, 
therefore,  from  inattention  to  the  work 
of  strangers,  but  from  sheer  fallibility  of 
judgment.  And  the  work  of  strangers 
is  very  carefully  considered  in  every 
publishing  house  that  I  know  anything 
about.  Every  publisher  in  these  days  is 
just  as  eager  to  get  a  new  good  writer  on 
his  list  as  any  unknown  writer  is  eager  to 
get  a  publisher;  and  no  manuscript 
above  the  grade  of  illiteracy  is  neglected. 

A  "  first  reader  " — a  man  of  all  around 
general  knowledge  of  books,  and  he 
ought  to  be  a  man  full  of  hard  common- 
sense,  common-sense  being  worth  more 
than  technical  literary  knowledge — the 
" first  reader"  examines  the  manuscript. 


84  A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

If  it  be  a  shopworn  piece  of  common- 
place work,  obviously  hopeless,  he  may 
not  read  it  from  preface  to  end,  but  he 
must  say  in  his  written  report  whether 
he  has  read  it  all.  Whether  he  condemn 
it  or  approve  it,  it  is  examined  or  read  by 
another  reader.  If  both  these  condemn 
it  as  hopeless,  the  publisher  declines  it 
without  more  ado. 

The  greater  number  of  manuscripts 
that  come  to  publishing  houses  are  hope- 
less. Three-fourths  of  them,  or  more, 
are  novels  that  have  been  written  by 
lonely  women  or  by  men  who  have  no 
successful  occupation;  and  most  of 
these  are  conscious  or  unconscious  imi- 
tations of  recent  popular  novels.  It  does 
not  require  very  shrewd  judgment  to  see 
that  they  are  hopeless.  But  it  does  re- 
quire time.  If  they  are  above  the  grade 
of  illiteracy  somebody  must  read  a  hun- 
dred pages  or  more  to  make  sure  that 
the  dulness  of  the  early  chapters  may 
not  be  merely  a  beginner's  way  of  find- 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    85 

ing  his  gait.  And  many  of  these  manu- 
scripts go  from  publishing  house  to  pub- 
lishing house.  There  are,  I  should  say,  a 
thousand  hopeless  novels  in  manuscript 
at  all  times  making  this  weary  journey. 

Sometimes  one  comes  back  to  the 
same  publisher  a  second  time,  the  author 
having  perhaps  not  kept  an  accurate 
record  of  its  itinerary.  Sometimes  it 
comes  back  a  year  later,  somewhat 
changed.  There  is  one  novel-manuscript 
that  has  come  to  me  four  times  within 
two  years,  every  time  in  a  somewhat 
different  form,  and  twice  with  different 
titles — obviously  to  fool  the  "careless" 
publisher. 

While  very  few  mistakes  are  made  or 
are  likely  to  be  made  with  these  manu- 
scripts that  two  readers  independently 
declare  hopeless,  the  class  next  to  these 
require  a  great  deal  of  work  and  care. 
This  class  includes  those  books  by  un- 
known writers  that  are  not  bad.  One 
reader  will  say  that  they  are  worth  con- 


86  A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

sidering.  The  next  reader  will  say  that 
they  have  some  sort  of  merit.  Then  the 
publisher  must  go  slowly.  A  third  per- 
son must  read  them.  If  the  publisher  be 
an  ideal  publisher,  he  will  read  them 
himself.  (The  weakness  of  most  Ameri- 
can publishing  houses  of  this  generation 
comes  just  here — the  publisher  himself 
does  not  read  many  manuscripts.) 

In  the  best  publishing  houses  (this,  I 
know,  is  the  habit  of  three)  the  reports 
on  books  of  this  class  are  all  read  at  a 
meeting  of  the  firm,  or  (better)  at  a 
meeting  of  the  firm  and  of  the  heads  of 
departments.  At  such  a  meeting  the 
judgment  of  a  sensible  man  who  is  at  the 
head  of  the  sales  department  of  a  pub- 
lishing house  is  very  useful.  He  knows 
by  his  everyday  work  what  sort  of  books 
the  public  is  buying.  Some  of  them  are 
books  that  the  "literary"  world  knows 
nothing  about  or  has  forgotten. 

And  three  or  four  or  five  men,  by  a 
little  discussion,  can  reach  a  clearer  and 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION   87 

saner  judgment  about  a  book  from  the 
reports  of  three  or  four  readers  than  the 
readers  themselves  can  reach  or  than 
any  one  man  or  any  two  men  who  con- 
sider the  reports  could  reach.  There  is 
no  subject  in  the  world  about  which  a 
conference  is  likely  to  be  more  helpful. 
One  man's  judgment  about  the  publish- 
ing quality  of  a  book  may  easily  be 
wrong.  The  judgment  of  two  men  may 
be  wrong  if  they  look  at  it  from  the  same 
angle  or  with  the  same  temperament. 
But  the  judgment  of  three,  or  four,  or 
five  men,  if  they  have  the  facts  before 
them  and  if  they  indulge  in  frank  dis- 
cussion, is  very  seldom  wrong.  No  book 
on  which  serious  work  has  been  done 
ought  to  be  rejected  or  accepted  without 
the  benefit  of  the  independent  reports  of 
two  or  three  sensible  persons  who  have 
carefully  read  it,  and  without  the  dis- 
cussions of  these  reports  by  three  or  four 
other  persons  of  experience  and  judg- 
ment.    And  in  at  least  three  American 


88   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

publishing  houses  every  manuscript  of 
any  value  or  promise  runs  a  course  of 
hopeful  consideration  such  as  this;  for 
the  publisher  wants  good  new  books,  he 
wants  good  new  writers ;  and  he  wants 
them  badly.  Half  a  dozen  popular 
writers  will  build  a  publishing  house. 
It  is,  therefore,  doubtful  whether  any 
other  business  is  so  carefully  conducted 
with  reference  to  its  sources  of  supply. 

In  fact,  all  publishers  make  many 
more  mistakes  in  accepting  books  than 
in  declining  them.  They  accept  many 
books  from  new  writers  that  they  hope 
may  possibly  succeed,  but  in  which  they 
have  not  very  strong  faith.  It  is  the 
book  manuscripts  of  this  class  that 
cause  the  most  work  and  the  greatest 
trouble — the  class  that  may  possibly 
succeed.  A  book  of  this  class  by  a  new 
writer  who  shows  cleverness  or  some 
other  good  quality  is  often  accepted  in 
the  hope  that  the  author  may  do  better 
with  the  next-  book.    It  is  accepted  as  an 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    89 

encouragement  and  as  a  hope ;  it  chiefly 
is  for  this  reason  that  so  many  books  are 
published  that  are  barely  good  enough 
to  warrant  publication.  The  publisher 
is  trying  to  "develop"  an  author. 

Sometimes  this  method  succeeds ;  for 
it  sometimes  happens  that  a  good  writer 
writes  a  first  book  that  is  merely  a  prom- 
ise of  later  achievement.  But  this  does 
not  often  happen.  In  most  cases  the  sec- 
ond book  is  no  better  than  the  first — or 
is  worse.  Then  the  publisher  loses  and 
the  writer  is  seldom  heard  of  again.  The 
number  of  one-novel  writers  scattered 
over  the  land  would  surprise  the  world  if 
it  were  known.  There  is  no  rule  about 
literary  production  to  which  there  are 
not  an  embarrassing  number  of  excep- 
tions. But  in  most  cases  a  successful 
writer  starts  with  a  successful  book. 
The  hope  that  the  second  book  will  be 
better  is  one  of  the  rocks  on  which  many 
publishing  ventures  wreck. 

But  if  the  publishers  put  forth  a  num- 


96   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

ber  of  commonplace  books  (chiefly 
novels)  from  a  false  hope  that  they  may 
thus  develop  good  writers,  they  also  do  a 
service  of  the  opposite  kind.  They  save 
the  long-suffering  public  from  many 
worthless  books.  For  if  the  public  had 
thrust  upon  it  all  or  half  or  a  tenth  of  the 
books  that  are  written,  what  a  dull 
world  we  should  have ! 

When  a  book-manuscript  has  been  re- 
jected, the  delicate  task  comes  next  of 
informing  the  author.  This  task  is 
seldom  done  as  well  as  it  ought  to  be.  It 
is  almost  impossible  for  a  publisher — 
who  receives  and  rejects  manuscripts  as 
a  matter  of  business — to  put  himself  in 
the  place  of  a  writer  who  has  spent 
lonely  weeks  in  her  work.  To  send  a 
mere  business  note  is  almost  an  insult. 
Yet  what  more  can  the  publisher  write  ? 
He  does  not  dare  write  hopefully.  If  he 
does  he  will  give  a  degree  of  encourage- 
ment that  is  dishonest.  Yet  the  author 
expects  a  long  and  explicit  letter  telling 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    91 

why  the  manuscript  is  unavailable.  If 
she  does  not  receive  such  a  letter  she 
jumps  to  the  conclusion  that  her  manu- 
script has  not  had  fair  consideration. 
Publishers'  letters  of  rejection  are  the 
chief  cause,  I  suspect,  of  the  persistent 
notion  that  they  are  careless  in  the  ex- 
amination of  manuscripts. 

Every  letter  of  declination  ought  to  be 
written  by  a  skilful  man — a  diplomatist 
who  can  write  an  unpleasant  truth  with- 
out offence.  Every  such  letter  ought  to 
be  written  with  a  pen.  No  general  form 
ought  to  be  used.  Yet  in  only  one  of  the 
publishing  houses  whose  habits  I  know 
is  this  degree  of  care  taken.  The  con- 
sideration of  manuscript  from  strangers 
is  careful  and  conscientious,  but  letters 
of  rejection  are  often  perfunctory. 

To  sell  a  novel  that  has  the  mysterious 
quality  of  popularity  in  it  is  not  difficult. 
Properly  launched,  it  sells  itself.  To  sell 
a  novel  that  lacks  the  inherent  quality  of 
popularity — that  is  almost  impossible. 


92    A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

Apparently  it  has  sometimes  been  done, 
but  nobody  can  be  sure  whether  the 
result  after  all  was  due  to  the  book  or 
to  the  salesman.  Every  publisher  has 
proved,  over  and  over  again,  to  his  dis- 
gust, that  he  cannot  make  the  people 
buy  a  novel  that  they  do  not  want ;  and 
when  a  novel  appears  (no  better  novel) 
that  they  do  want,  the  novel-readers 
find  it  out  by  some  free-masonry  and 
would  buy  it  if  the  publishers  tried  to 
prevent  them. 

Nobody  has  discovered  a  rule — to  say 
nothing  of  a  principle — whereby  the 
popularity  of  a  novel  by  a  new  writer 
may  be  determined.  If  it  be  a  really 
great,  strong  book,  of  course  it  is  easy  to 
understand  that  it  will  sell ;  but  whether 
it  will  sell  10,000  copies  or  100,000  no- 
body knows.  If  it  be  a  slap-dash  dime- 
novel,  full  of  action,  it  is  easy  to  guess 
that  it  will  sell;  but  whether  5,000  or 
500,000  nobody  knows.  Sometimes  a 
book  of  the  sheerest  commonplace  hap- 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    93 

pens  to  hit  the  public  mood  at  the  happy- 
angle  and  sells  beyond  all  expectation. 
The  truth  is,  every  new  novel  by  an  un- 
known writer  presents  a  problem  peculiar 
to  itself ;  and  in  advertising  it  and  offer- 
ing it  for  sale,  every  book's  peculiar 
problem  must  be  studied  by  itself. 

The  whole  question  is  a  subtle  social 
one.  Who  could  have  foretold  popular- 
ity for  "pigs  in  clover,"  rather  than  for 
some  other  silly  puzzle;  or  for  ping- 
pong;  or  for  women's  hats  of  a  certain 
grotesque  construction?  The  popular 
whim  about  novels  is  like  the  whims  for 
these  things.  And  a  popular  novel 
passes  as  quickly  as  any  other  fashion. 
The  story  has  been  many  times  told  of 
the  sudden  falling  off  of  the  demand  for 
"Trilby" — so  sudden  that  the  publish- 
ers had  a  large  number  of  copies  left  on 
hand  which  could  not  be  sold  at  all  ex- 
cept as  waste  paper.  Every  publisher  is 
afraid  to  publish  very  large  editions  of 
any  very  popular  novel;   for  they  have 


94   A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

all  had  an  experience  parallel  to  this  ex- 
perience with  "Trilby." 

But  other  kinds  of  books  are  less 
capricious  than  novels ;  and  the  business 
of  the  publisher  has  been  reduced  more 
nearly  to  a  science  in  dealing  with  books 
of  information.  Several  publishers,  for 
example,  have  series  of  little  books 
made  of  selections  from  English  and 
American  classics.  Many  of  them  have 
sold  well ;  but  some  of  them  have  sold  by 
the  million  and  others  just  as  good  and 
just  as  attractive  have  stopped  at  the 
ten- thousand  limit  or  at  a  lower  limit. 
The  difference  is  with  the  skill  with 
which  they  were  put  on  the  market. 
Sometimes  an  ingenious  "scheme"  will 
sell  information  books  in  great  numbers ; 
and  it  often  happens  that  the  worst  of 
three  or  four  books  on  the  same  subject 
and  published  for  the  same  price,  be- 
comes far  better  known  than  the  other 
better  books. 

As  a  theoretical  proposition  it  seems 


A  PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION    95 

plain  that  the  publisher  who  will  spend 
the  most  money  in  newspaper  advertis- 
ing will  sell  the  most  books.  Authors 
not  infrequently  take  up  this  notion. 
Sometimes  it  is  true;  for  sometimes 
newspaper  advertising  will  cause  a  great 
demand  for  a  book.  But  this  is  not  true 
with  every  book.  And  most  recent  pub- 
lishing failures  have  been  due — in  a 
great  measure,  at  least — to  prodigal  ad- 
vertising— or,  perhaps,  to  misdirected 
advertising.  ' 

Every  book  is  a  problem  unto  itself. 
The  wise  publisher  so  regards  it  from  the 
beginning;  and  he  makes  his  plans  for 
every  book  to  suit  its  peculiar  case  and 
not  another.  All  the  long  road  from 
author  to  reader,  the  book — any  book — 
presents  a  series  of  interesting,  original 
problems.  Many  of  them  are  very  fas- 
cinating problems.  They  call  for  im- 
agination, fertility,  ingenuity.  The 
reason  why  few  authors  or  authors' 
societies  or  other  persons  who  have  not 


96    A   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

been  definitely  trained  to  publishing 
fail,  is  that  they  are  too  likely  to  regard 
publishing  as  a  mere  routine  business — a 
business  of  manufacturing  a  certain  pro- 
duct and  then  of  offering  it  for  sale. 
They  forget  that  every  book — and  even 
every  edition  of  every  book — presents  a 
problem  that  was  never  presented  be- 
fore since  the  world  was  made.  And 
when  its  sympathetic  ingenuity  and  in- 
ventiveness fail,  a  publishing  house  be- 
gins to  become  a  mere  business  and  the 
drying-up  period  is  not  far  off. 

But  no  publishing  house  fails  because 
it  does  not  examine  manuscripts  care- 
fully. There  is  no  other  business  that  I 
know  of  that  is  done  more  seriously ;  and 
the  mistakes  made  are  fewer  than  the 
public  thinks.  They  are  mistakes  of 
judgment  and  not  of  carelessness. 


The  Printer  Who  Issues  Books  at 
the  Author's  Expense 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE    PRINTER    WHO    ISSUES    BOOKS 
AT  THE  AUTHOR'S   EXPENSE 

A  Heartless  Pirate  Who  Preys  Upon  the  Un- 
sophisticated and  Ambitious  Writer — The  Con- 
tract in  Which  This  Sort  of  "Publisher"  Can- 
not Lose — The  Inevitable  Disappointment — 
How  the  Publication  by  Even  a  Responsible 
House  of  a  Book  That  Sells  Poorly  Injures  the 
House. 

An  innocent  and  ambitious  good 
woman  sent  to  me  last  year  a  form  of 
contract  that  a  printer  who  pretended 
to  be  a  publisher  had  sent  her  to 
sign  for  the  publication  of  a  novel.  In 
its  unessential  clauses  it  was  like  the 
usual  publisher's  contract;  but  it  re- 
quired the  author  to  pay  in  advance  a 
fixed  sum  for  the  plates  and  for  the 
manufacture  of  one   thousand  copies; 

99 


ioo  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

and  this  sum  was  just  about  twice  what 
they  should  cost  him.  Then  he  was  to 
pay  her  not  the  usual  ten  or  even  fifteen 
per  cent,  royalty,  but  fifty  per  cent,  on 
all  copies  sold — as  well  he  might;  and, 
if  at  the  end  of  a  year  the  book  had 
ceased  to  sell,  she  was  bound  to  buy  the 
plates  from  him  at  half  cost.  The 
meaning  of  all  this  translated  into 
figures,  is  this:  The  plates  would  cost 
him  $250,  for  he  does  cheap  work;  a 
thousand  copies  of  the  book  would  cost 
him  $200,  for  he  makes  cheap  books; 
total,  $450.  She  would  pay  him  in  ad- 
vance $900.  He  has  a  profit  so  far  of 
$450.  He  does  not  expect  to  sell  any 
of  the  books.  Her  friends  would  buy 
perhaps  as  many  as  two  hundred  copies. 
They  would  not  be  on  sale  at  the  book- 
stores— except  in  her  own  town.  At 
the  end  of  the  year  she  would  pay  him 
again  for  the  plates  half  what  he  charged 
her  at  first — which  is  just  what  they 
cost  him.     By  this  time  she  would  have 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  101 

paid  just  three  times  their  cost  to  him. 
His  outlay  in  the  whole  transaction 
would  be : 

For  plates $250 

For  1000  copies 200 

$450 

His  income  would  be:  Her  prepayment..  900 
Her  purchase  of  the  plates  a  year  later. .  250 

1150 

His  profit $700 

He  would  not  have  even  to  make  any 
outlay  of  capital.  She  supplies  the  cap- 
ital and  he  makes  his  $700  profit  by 
writing  her  a  few  letters.  If  any  of  the 
books  were  sold  he  would  receive  also 
half  what  they  brought.  She  would 
have  spent  $1150,  less  what  she  re- 
ceived for  the  few  copies  that  were  sold. 
Her  book  would  not  have  been  pub- 
lished— only  printed  at  an  excessive 
cost. 

There  are  several  "publishers"  who 
seem  to  do  a  prosperous  brief  business 
of  this  kind  by  preying  upon  inexpe- 


102  A   PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

rienced  and  disappointed  authors.  It 
is  only  by  accident  they  ever  get  a  book 
that  sells;  and  they  hardly  pretend  to 
put  books  on  the  market,  for  of  course 
the  booksellers  will  not  buy  them.  A 
really  good  book  would,  therefore,  in 
their  hands  be  buried.  The  public 
would  never  find  it  out.  They  print  a 
large  number  of  the  novels  that  the  real 
publishers  decline. 

The  long  list  of  books — chiefly  novels 
— that  these  pseudo-publishers  put  out 
tells  a  sad  tale  of  misdirected  energy 
and  of  disappointed  hopes.  A  man — 
oftener  it  is  a  woman — conceives  the 
notion  of  writing  a  novel.  She  works 
alone.  She  shuts  herself  off  from  life 
about  her.  Any  human  being  who 
spends  months  at  a  self-imposed  secret 
task  becomes  profoundly,  even  abnor- 
mally interested  in  it.  The  story  grows 
— or  flows;  for  the  author  becomes 
more  fluent  as  she  goes  on.  She  is  likely 
to  accept  all  the  stories  of  extraordinary 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  103 

successes  that  she  reads  in  the  literary 
journals  as  if  they  were  common  suc- 
cesses. She  goes  on  working  by  herself 
with  no  corrective  companionship.  At 
last  she  sends  it  to  a  real  publisher  and 
gets  a  disappointing  decision.  She 
imagines  a  thousand  reasons  why  she  is 
not  appreciated.  She  sends  it  to  an- 
other, and  so  on.  The  story  of  the 
wanderings  of  "  David  Harum"  in  man- 
uscript has  given  courage  to  thousands 
of  worthless  novels — a  courage  to  travel 
to  the  last  ditch,  and  the  last  ditch  is  the 
pseudo-publisher.  "Yes,"  he  writes, 
"it  is  an  unusual  story;"  and  he  will 
be  greatly  honored  to  publish  it,  and 
sends  one  of  his  remarkable  contracts. 

To  get  the  book  published  by  any- 
body will  bring  her  recognition,  she 
thinks.  The  public  will  be  kinder  than 
the  publishers.  She  takes  the  risk — 
sometimes  goes  into  debt  to  do  so.  That 
is  the  end  of  the  book,  and  in  most  cases 
the  end  of  the  author's  career.       The 


104  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

work  begun  in  loneliness  has  ended  in 
oblivion — wasted  days,  wasted  dollars, 
wasted  hopes. 

Yet  what  is  an  author  to  do  who  be- 
lieves in  his  own  work  when  it  is  refused 
by  the  regular  publisher?  Publish  it 
himself  or  let  it  remain  in  manuscript. 
Never  permit  it  to  be  brought  out  by  a 
publisher  to  whom  any  suspicion  at- 
taches. 

There  is  not  much  danger  (I  do  not 
believe  there  is  any  danger)  that  a  man- 
uscript of  any  value  whatever  will  under 
present  conditions  fail  to  find  a  legiti- 
mate purchaser.  But  one  way  out  of 
the  difficulty  that  authors  often  seek  is 
to  propose  to  a  legitimate  publisher  to 
publish  his  book  at  the  writer's  ex- 
pense; and  it  is  not  apparent  to  the 
layman  why  the  publisher  cannot  afford 
to  make  such  arrangements.  "If  the 
author  pays  the  bill,"  he  says,  "  the  pub- 
lisher will  surely  lose  nothing. ' '  But  the 
publisher  does  lose,  and  loses  heavily, 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  105 

every  time  he  publishes  a  book  that  is 
not  successful  in  the  market.  A  pub- 
lisher cannot  afford  to  accept  a  book 
that  will  not  itself  earn  a  profit.  If  the 
author  pay  all  the  cost  and  a  good 
profit  besides,  even  this  does  not  change 
the  case;  for  unsalable  books  clog  the 
market  and  stop  the  wheels  of  the  pub- 
lisher's whole  trade.  He  soon  begins  to 
lose  influence  and  standing  in  the  book 
trade.  The  jobbers  buy  new  books 
from  him  in  smaller  quantities.  The 
booksellers  become  suspicious  of  his 
judgment. 

Last  year,  to  give  a  true  instance,  a 
publisher  put  out  four  new  novels  by 
four  new  writers.  His  salesmen  and  his 
advertising  man  announced  them  as 
good  books.  They  made  enthusiastic 
estimates  of  them.  The  book  dealers 
ordered  liberally.  Three  out  of  the 
four  failed  to  make  any  appreciable 
success.  The  dealers  had  many  copies 
of  them  left  on  hand.     This  year,  when 


106  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

the  same  publisher  brought  out  two 
more  new  novels  by  two  more  new 
writers,  his  salesmen  met  with  incre- 
dulity and  indifference.  The  booksellers 
said  to  them  with  a  sad  smile,  "We'll 
swap  copies  of  your  last  year's  novels 
for  these." 

Now  it  so  happens  that  both  of  these 
new  books  of  this  year  are  good  and 
popular.  A  demand  for  them  was  made 
as  soon  as  the  reviews  appeared  and 
people  began  to  read  them.  But  the 
booksellers  were  ill  supplied.  They 
would  order  only  a  few  copies  at  a  time 
— or  none.  Thus  the  good  books  of  this 
year  suffered  because  the  publisher's 
dull  books  of  last  year  failed  to  bring 
profit  or  satisfaction  to  anybody.  They 
stood  in  the  way  of  this  year's  better 
books. 

While,  therefore,  no  legitimate  pub- 
lisher wishes  to  reduce  his  business  to  a 
mere  commercial  basis,  and  while  he  is 
eager  to  maintain  the  dignity  of  his  pro- 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  107 

fession — must  maintain  it  in  fact— and 
do  as  high  service  as  possible  to  the 
literary  production  of  his  time;  yet  he 
can  not  load  down  his  list  with  many 
books  that  have  not  a  good  commercial 
reason  for  existence. 

The  plausible  proposition  which  is  so 
often  made  in  these  days  of  universal 
authorship — to  publish  books  at  the 
author's  expense — is  for  these  reasons 
not  a  sound  proposition.  If  the  book 
succeeds  there  is  no  reason  why  the 
author  should  make  the  investment. 
If  it  fail,  the  publisher  loses,  even  though 
the  author  settle  the  bill;  and  he  loses 
heavily. 

A  writer  who  asks  a  publisher  to 
bring  out  a  book  that  has  no  commer- 
cial reason  for  existence  is  asking  him 
to  imitate  the  "fake"  publisher.  The 
"fake"  publisher  could  not  make  a  liv- 
ing (since  he  has  no  character  and  can- 
not sell  books)  except  by  cash  payments 
from  his  authors.     As  soon  as  the  pub- 


108  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

lisher  begins  to  receive  cash  payments 
from  his  authors  (be  the  basis  ever  so 
legitimate)  he  begins  to  clog  up  ths  out- 
lets for  his  product.  He  has  taken  the 
first  step  towards  "fake"  publishing. 

In  a  word,  commercially  unprofitable 
books  may  be  printed,  but  they  cannot 
be  published  without  ruining  the  ma- 
chinery that  they  are  run  through.  He 
is  the  best  publisher  who  has  the  largest 
proportion  of  good  books  on  his  list 
(whether  his  list  be  long  or  short)  that 
are  at  the  same  time  alive  in  the 
market. 

There  are — let  it  be  said  as  an  excep- 
tion— a  few  classes  of  books  that  every 
publisher  wishes  to  have  on  his  list  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  they  cannot  be 
made  profitable,  such  as  works  of  great 
scholarship  or  monumental  works  that 
have  a  lasting  value.  It  is  legitimate 
that  the  writers  or  the  societies  or  or- 
ganizations under  whose  directions  such 
books  were  written  should  pay  or  share 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  109 

the  cost  of  their  manufacture.  But  few 
such  works  yield  a  profit  at  last  to  either 
publisher  or  author.  And  they  are  not 
made  to  clog  the  book  market.  They 
are  sold  only  to  special  classes  of  readers. 

A  book  is  a  commodity.  Yet  the  mo- 
ment it  is  treated  as  a  mere  commodity 
it  takes  severe  revenge  on  its  author  and 
on  its  publisher. 

These  pseudo-publishers  sometimes 
solicit  manuscripts  from  ignorant  writ- 
ers. They  have  veiled  advertisements 
in  the  literary  journals.  Ignorance  and 
ambition  is  a  susceptible  combination. 
Several  years  ago  one  of  these  plausible 
swindlers  bribed  a  reader  in  one  of  the 
larger  publishing  houses  to  report  to 
him  the  names  of  all  the  writers  whose 
novels  were  declined  there.  The  fakir 
then  plied  them  with  circulars  and 
letters. 

While  I  have  been  writing  about  pub- 
lishing swindles  I  have  been  reminded 
of  the  accusation  brought  several  years 


no  A   PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

ago  against  publishers — especially  Eng- 
lish publishers — that  the  temptation  to 
fraud  was  too  strong  to  be  resisted  by 
any  but  the  most  upright  and  successful 
men.  An  author  gives  his  book  to  his 
publisher.  Twice  a  year  the  publisher 
makes  a  report — pays  royalties  on  the 
number  of  books  that  he  has  reported  as 
sold.  There  is  no  way  whereby  the 
author  can  verify  the  publisher's  re- 
ports. He  has  to  take  his  word  for  it. 
Even  if  the  author  or  someone  who 
acted  for  him  were  to  see  the  publisher's 
books,  he  could  learn  nothing,  for  the 
publisher's  bookkeeping  is  a  very  com- 
plicated thing;  and  reports  of  book 
sales  could  easily  be  "doctored." 

The  chance  for  fraud  does  exist.  But 
the  first  wish  of  every  normal  man  in  the 
business,  even  if  he  lacks  vigorous  hon- 
esty, is  to  make  his  reports  of  sales  to 
his  author  as  large  as  possible.  This 
wish  is  too  strong  to  be  overcome  by 
anything  less  than  the  most  hopeless 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  in 

moral  depravity.  A  publisher  who 
should  commit  the  crime  of  making 
false  reports  to  his  authors  would  be  a 
monstrosity.  Yet  the  contention  that 
Sir  Walter  Besant  made  in  England  for 
so  many  years,  that  the  publishing  bus- 
iness was  conducted  without  such  checks 
and  verifications  as  are  applied  to  other 
business  transactions  was  true;  and  I, 
for  one,  see  no  practical  remedy  for  it. 

Moral:  Select  your  publisher  with 
care;  make  sure  that  he  is  honest  (by 
far  most  of  us  are) ;  then  trust  him. 
But  steer  clear  of  all  "fake"  publishers 
and  "agents." 


The  Advertising  of  Books  Still 
Experimental 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE    ADVERTISING    OF     BOOKS     STILL 
EXPERIMENTAL 

Publishers  Are  Uncertain  as  to  the  Amount  of 
Sales  Made  in  That  Way — How  the  Book  Busi- 
ness Differs  from  the  Shoe  Trade,  for  Example 
— The  Problem  of  How  to  Get  the  Books  Be- 
fore the  People  Is  at  the  Root  of  All  Other 
Book  Trade  Questions — Why  the  Book  Can- 
vasser Is  Still  Necessary — A  Vast  Field  Wait- 
ing for  Development. 

About  the  advertising  of  books,  no- 
body knows  anything.  The  most  that 
can  be  said  is  that  some  publishers  are 
making  very  interesting  experiments. 
But  nobody  has  yet  worked  out  a  single 
general  principle  that  is  of  great  value. 
The  publishers  themselves  frankly  con- 
fess that  they  do  not  know  how  to  ad- 
vertise books — except  a  few  publishers 
who  have  had  little  experience. 

"5 


n6  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

The  fundamental  difficulty  of  course 
is  that  hardly  any  two  books  present  the 
same  problem.  Find  a  successful  ad- 
*  vertising  plan  for  one  book — it  will  not 
be  a  good  plan  for  another.  This  fun- 
damental difficulty  marks  the  difference, 
for  instance,  between  books  and  shoes. 
When  a  shoe  merchant  finds  out  by  ex- 
periment how  to  describe  his  shoes  and 
in  what  periodicals  to  print  his  descrip- 
tion, his  problem  is  solved.  Recently 
several  publishers  discovered  a  success- 
ful way  to  advertise  a  novel.  They 
tried  the  same  plan  with  another  novel 
and  another.  But  it's  hit  or  miss.  I, 
for  one,  would  give  much  to  know  how 
often  it  has  been  "miss." 

The  old-fashioned  way  was  to  insert 
a  brief,  simple,  dignified  announcement 
of  every  book,  as  is  still  done  in  The 
Spectator,  of  London,  for  example. 
Good;  but  such  an  announcement 
doesn't  go  far.  A  very  few  thousand 
persons   see   it.     They   wait   until   the 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  117 

books  are  reviewed  or  till  some  friend 
or  authority  speaks  about  them.  For 
this  perfectly  good  reason  some  publish- 
ers do  not  insert  many  advertisements 
in  those  publications  that  go  only  to  the 
literary  class — they  are  to  a  degree  su- 
perfluous. Those  that  are  inserted  are 
inserted  to  give  the  publishers  and  the 
books  a  certain  "standing,"  and  to 
keep  pleasant  the  relations  between  the 
publishers  and  these  journals. 

Then  come,  of  course,  the  monthly 
popular  magazines.  They  reach  a  very 
much  wider  class  of  readers,  and  to  ad- 
vertise books  in  them  is  a  logical  pro- 
cedure. But  their  advertising  rates  are 
almost  prohibitory.  The  margin  of 
profit  on  books  is  very  small.  There 
is  not  money  enough  in  the  business  to 
warrant  extensive  and  expensive  maga- 
zine advertising.  The  result  is  the  pub- 
lishers put  their  announcements  of  per- 
haps a  dozen  new  books  on  a  single  ad- 
vertising page  of  the  magazines,   and 


n8  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

they  cannot,  in  this  restricted  space, 
say  enough  about  any  particular  book 
to  make  the  advertisement  effective. 

Then  there  are  the  daily  papers.  One 
or  two  of  the  best  dailies  in  every  large 
city  are  used  by  the  publishers  for  an- 
nouncements of  new  books.  They  can- 
not afford  more — except  in  the  case  of 
those  novels  which  may  reach  enormous 
editions.  Given  a  novel  that  will  sell 
100,000  copies  or  more,  and  you  have 
enough  possible  profit  to  warrant  a 
good  deal  of  advertising.  But  during 
this  calendar  year  only  two  novels  (per- 
haps three)  have  new  editions  of  more 
than  100,000  copies.  What  is  a  pub- 
lisher to  do,  then,  who  has  a  novel  that 
will  sell  10,000  copies,  or  20,000  copies 
and  no  more?  Can  he  make  it  sell 
50,000  or  100,000  by  spending  a  large 
sum  in  advertising  it?  Perhaps,  once 
in  ten  times,  or  once  in  twenty  times; 
but  not  oftener. 

Five  or  six  publishing  houses  spend 


A   PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  119 

more  than  $50,000  a  year,  each,  in  ad- 
vertising. Two  spend  a  good  deal  more 
than  this  sum;  and  one  is  reported  as 
saying  that  he  spends  $250,000.  These 
are  not  large  sums  when  compared  with 
the  sums  spent  for  advertising  other 
wares.  But  an  advertisement  of  a  shoe 
published  to-day  will  help  to  sell  that 
shoe  next  year.  The  shoemaker  gets  a 
cumulative  effect.  But  your  novel  ad- 
vertised to-day  will  be  dead  next  year. 
You  get  no  cumulative  effect.  When 
I  say,  therefore,  that  no  publisher  has 
mastered  the  art  of  advertising  books, 
I  tell  the  literal  truth.  They  all  run 
against  a  dead  wall;  and  they  will  all 
tell  you  so  in  frank  moments. 

The  study  of  the  problem  of  adver- 
tising books  takes  one  far  afield.  What 
quality  in  a  book  makes  it  popular  any- 
how? Even  if  you  are  wise  enough  to 
know  that  (and  you  are  very  wise  if  you 
do  know  that)  the  question  arises 
whether  advertising  is  necessary.  There 


120  A   PUBLISHER'S  CONFESSION 

have  been  as  many  popular  books  sold 
in  large  editions  without  advertising  as 
with  it.  If  your  book  is  really  popular 
it  may  sell  anyhow.  I  could  make  a 
long  list  of  such  books,  and  a  still  longer 
list  of  books  that  extensive  advertising 
did  not  sell — books  which  seemed  to 
their  publishers  to  have  the  quality  of 
great  popularity. 

The  question  carries  us  further  back 
still.  Let  us  take  the  analogy  of  the 
shoemaker  again.  He  has  shoe  stores 
within  reach  of  the  whole  population. 
There  is  not  a  village  in  the  land  where 
there  is  not  a  store  in  which  shoes  are 
sold.  The  manufacturers'  salesmen  find 
this  distributing  machinery  ready  to 
their  hands.  If  a  man  in  Arkansas  or 
in  Montana  or  in  Florida  wants  a  pair  of 
shoes,  he  is  within  reach  of  a  place  where 
he  may  buy  them.  Not  so  with  books. 
There  are  few  bookstores.  Two  or 
three  per  cent,  of  the  population  (per- 
haps less)  live  within  convenient  reach 


A   PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  121 

of  bookshops.  True,  a  book  may  be 
ordered  by  mail.  But  so  may  a  pair  of 
shoes.  But  this  is  not  a  good  substitute 
for  a  store,  where  a  man  may  see  the 
book.  The  mail-order  business  will 
always  be  secondary  to  direct  sales. 
But,  since  bookstores  are  so  few,  the 
book-distributing  machinery  is  wholly 
inadequate.  The  publisher  has  no  ef- 
fective way  yet  to  reach  his  normal  pub- 
lic with  his  wares. 

There  is  nobody  to  blame,  perhaps. 
Surely,  it  would  not  be  a  profitable 
undertaking  for  any  man  or  woman  to 
buy  a  stock  of  books  and  to  open  a  store 
in  a  small  town.  What  is  the  remedy, 
then? 

The  simple  truth  is,  here  is  one  of  the 
problems  of  distribution  that  have  not 
yet  been  solved.  There  are  throughout 
the  land  another  one  hundred  thousand 
persons  who  v/ould  buy  any  novel  of 
which  one  hundred  thousand  have  been 
sold,  if  they  could  see  the  book  and  hear 


122  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

about  it — if  it  were  intelligently  kept 
for  sale  where  they  would  see  it.  This 
is  a  self-evident  proposition.  But  no- 
body has  yet  found  a  way  thus  to  distrib- 
ute a  book.  And  (this  is  the  point)  until 
better  distributing  machinery  is  organ- 
ized, it  will  not  pay  publishers  to  adver- 
tise with  as  prodigal  a  hand  as  shoe- 
makers and  soapmakers  use  in  making 
their  wares  known. 

It  is  this  lack  of  proper  distributing 
machinery  that  has  made  possible  the 
career  of  the  book-agent.  There  are  no 
shoe  peddlers.  Almost  all  the  publish- 
ing houses — all  the  important  houses — 
employ  book  peddlers.  The  busines  is 
generally  regarded  as  a — nuisance,  to  say 
the  most  for  it.  But,  from  the  publish- 
er's point  of  view,  it  is  a  necessity.  And 
this  is  the  crude  way  whereby  it  is 
sought  to  remedy  the  radical  deficiency 
of  proper  distributing  machinery.  Of 
course,  the  book-agent  method  has  its 
obvious  disadvantages.     It  is  not  a  dig- 


A   PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  123 

nified  occupation,  as  most  agents  prac- 
tise it.  The  most  dignified  members  of 
the  community,  therefore,  do  not  take 
it  up.  In  every  case  it  is  not  even  the 
trustworthy  members  of  the  community 
that  take  it  up.  Again,  the  agent  must 
be  paid;  and  this  is  a  very  costly 
method  (to  the  purchaser)  of  buying 
books.  The  purchaser  pays  half  his 
money  for  the  books ;  the  other  half  for 
being  persuaded  to  buy  them. 

And  (to  take  a  broad,  economic  view 
of  the  subject)  the  book  peddler  surely 
cannot  be  considered  the  final  solution 
of  the  problem  of  a  proper  distribution 
of  books.  At  some  time  in  the  future, 
when  the  country  is  three  or  four  times 
as  densely  settled  as  it  now  is,  there  will 
be  book  stores  in  all  towns.  There  may 
still  be  need  for  the  persuasiveness  of 
the  agent,  for  some  of  the  most  success- 
ful of  them  now  do  their  best  work  in 
cities  within  sight  of  good  book  shops. 
But  the  point  is,  few  book-agents  sell 


i24  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

new  books,  and  few  of  them  sell  single 
books:  they  usually  sell  books  in  sets. 
The  problem,  therefore,  of  the  proper 
distribution  of  the  four  or  five  really 
good  books  that  my  publishing  house 
has  put  out  this  fall  still  remains  un- 
solved and,  though  I  advertised  them 
in  all  magazines  and  newspapers,  I 
should  not  effectively  reach  the  atten- 
tion of  one-fifth  or  one-tenth  of  the  pos- 
sible buyers  of  them.  I  should  simply 
spend  in  advertising  the  profit  that  I 
may  make  on  the  copies  that  I  sell  with 
a  reasonable  publicity  through  the  regu- 
lar channels.  I  do  insert  advertisements 
of  them  for  three  or  four  reasons — with 
the  hope  of  helping  their  sales ;  to  keep 
the  public  informed  of  the  activity  of  our 
publishing  house;  to  please  the  press; 
and — to  please  the  authors  of  the  books. 
But  I  know  very  well  that  I  am  working 
(as  every  publisher  is  working)  in  a  busi- 
ness that  has  not  yet  been  developed, 
that  is  behind  the  economic  organization 


A   PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  125 

of  other  kinds  of  manufacturing  and  sell- 
ing, that  awaits  proper  organization. 

Figure  it  out  yourself.  Here  is  a 
book  of  which  eighty  thousand  copies 
have  been  sold  through  "the  trade;" 
that  is,  through  the  book  stores.  Our 
salesmen  have  visited  every  important 
bookseller  from  Portland,  Me.,  to  Port- 
land, Ore.,  and  from  Duluth  to  New 
Orleans.  We  have  spent  quite  a  hand- 
some sum  in  advertising  it.  Four-fifths 
of  these  eighty  thousand  copies  were 
sold  in  a  few  months  after  its  publica- 
tion. The  booksellers  said  that  they 
could  sell  many  more  if  we  would  ad- 
vertise it  more.  We  did  so.  By  this 
time  our  salesmen  were  making  another 
trip.  No,  they  would  not  buy  more, 
thank  you ;  it  is  a  little  slow  now.  The 
second  effort  at  advertising  did  not 
cause  it  to  "  move  "  in  the  market.  The 
demand  is  slow  yet.  In  other  words, 
the  demand  for  it  that  could  be  supplied 
by  the  existing  book  stores  was  practi- 


126  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

cally  exhausted.  Our  second  adver- 
tising effort  was  a  waste  of  money.  We 
have  frankly  to  confess  that  we  do  not 
know  how  to  sell  more  copies  of  this 
book  until  the  time  comes  when  it  may 
be  put  into  a  "set"  and  sold  by  book 
agents.  This  is  the  same  as  to  say  that, 
the  few  existing  book  stores  utilized, 
there  is  no  organized  machinery  for  find- 
ing more  buyers  except  the  book  agent. 

Yet  it  is  obvious  that  a  wholesome 
book  (as  this  is)  which  eighty  thousand 
persons  have  bought  would  please  eighty 
thousand  other  persons  of  like  minds 
and  taste  if  we  had  any  way  to  find  these 
second  eighty  thousand  persons.  They 
exist,  of  course.  But  they  live  out  of 
easy  reach  of  the  book  stores.  The 
book  agents  will  find  them  several  years 
hence. 

I  have  (I  think)  shown  why  there  can 
never  be  a  publishers'  trust,  or  "com- 
bine," because  the  relation  of  the  pub- 
lisher and  the  author  is  a  personal  rela- 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  127 

tion  as  intimate  and  personal  as  the  rela- 
tion of  a  physician  to  his  patient  or  of  a 
lawyer  and  his  client.  But,  after  a  book 
has  been  sold  and  has  become  a  com- 
modity, the  problem  is  a  different  one. 
The  booksellers  have  perceived  this; 
and  they  have  made  ineffective  efforts 
to  "combine."  They  have  failed  be- 
cause they  have  not  made  plans  to  widen 
the  existing  market.  An  organization 
of  those  that  exist  is  not  enough.  The 
real  problem  is  to  extend  their  area,  to 
find  book-buyers  whom  they  do  not  now 
reach. 

Perhaps  all  this  is  very  dull — this 
trade  talk.  But  a  publisher  who  is 
worthy  of  his  calling  regards  himself  as 
an  educator  of  the  public;  and  he  has 
trade  reasons  and  higher  reasons  as  well 
for  wishing  to  reach  as  many  buyers  of 
his  good  books  as  he  possibly  can.  He 
knows  (and  you  know,  if  you  know  the 
American  people)  that  the  masses  even 
of  intelligent  folk  have  yet  hardly  fairly 


128  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

begun  to  buy  books.  Go  where  you 
will  among  the  people  and  you  will  find 
few  books — pitifully  few.  We  are  just 
coming  into  a  period  when  book-buying 
is  even  beginning  to  become  general. 
The  publishers  of  a  generation  hence  will 
sell  perhaps  ten  times  as  many  good 
books  as  are  sold  now — surely,  if  they 
find  in  their  day  distributing  machinery 
even  half  adequate. 


The  Story  of  a  Book  from  Author 
to  Reader 


CHAPTER  VIII 

THE  STORY  OF  A  BOOK  FROM  AUTHOR 
TO  READER 

The  Divers  Problems  Which  Constantly  Arise — 
Every  Step  of  the  Way  Beset  with  Expense,  So 
That  the  Publisher  Is  Amazed  When  He  Finds 
a  Surplus — Why  Books  of  Large  Sale  Are  Hard 
to  Get — The  Publisher  as  Anxious  as  the  Public 
to  Print  Better  Books. 

The  wonder  is  (and  in  my  mind  it 
grows  every  year)  how  the  publishers  of 
books  make  enough  money  to  keep  their 
shops  going.  When  I  look  at  my  own 
ledgers  (ledger,  by  the  way,  is  become  a 
mere  literary  word,  for  we  now  all  keep 
accounts  on  cards  and  not  in  books) — • 
whenever  I  look  at  my  own  cards  and 
see  a  profit,  I  am  astonished  as  much  as 
I  am  gratified.  Every  other  publisher  in 
131 


132  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

America,  if  he  have  a  normal  and  simple 
mind  such  as  fits  the  calling,  has  the 
same  emotion.  Let  me  say,  lest  I  ap- 
pear "  simple  "  in  another  sense,  that  our 
cards  have,  miraculously  enough,  gen- 
erally shown  very  satisfactory  profits, 
but  the  astonishment  never  becomes 
less. 

See  what  a  long  series  of  processes,  or 
adventures,  if  you  will,  a  book  must  go 
through  between  the  writer  and  the 
reader;  every  step  costs  money;  and 
the  utmost  possible  profit  is  small.  Sup- 
pose it  be  a  novel.  "Book"  means 
"novel"  these  days  in  "literary"  circles 
and  journals.  Heaven  bless  our  shallow 
gabble  called  "  reviews."  A  novel  comes 
to  the  publisher  in  fairly  good  English. 
The  English  doubtless  is  the  author's, 
but  the  punctuation  and  capitals  are  the 
"typewriter-lady's"  own.  It  must  be 
read  by  one  person ;  and,  if  that  person's 
report  have  a  ray  of  hope,  it  must  be 
read  by  another;    perhaps  by  a  third. 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  133 

These  "readers"  cost  money — alas!  too 
little  money.  They  are  generally  liter- 
ary persons  who  have  failed,  and  there  is 
something  pathetic  about  their  occupa- 
tion. Then,  after  two  or  three  readers 
have  reported  on  it,  I  have  to  read  it — 
in  our  particular  shop,  in  any  shop, 
somebody  "higher  up"  must  read  it — 
especially  if  it  come  from  a  new  writer. 
Then  we  have  to  correspond  with  the 
author  or  have  interviews  with  h — er. 
All  this  takes  time,  and  the  cost  of  this 
service  rolls  up.  Somebody  must  next 
go  over  the  manuscript  to  prepare  it  for 
the  printer — to  make  sure  that  the 
heroine's  name  is  spelt  the  same  way  all 
through  and  so  forth  and  so  forth.  With 
the  processes  of  manufacture  I  need  not 
weary  you.  Only  I  must  say  that  a  bad 
manuscript  can  be  put  into  legible  type, 
and  that  type  cast  into  solid  metal 
blocks  ready  for  the  press  with  a  rapid- 
ity and  cheapness  that  rank  among  the 
mechanical  wonders  of  the  world. 


134  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

By  this  time  the  artist  has  appeared, 
if  the  novel  is  to  be  illustrated.  Book 
salesmen  will  tell  you  that  pictures  help 
to  sell  novels,  and  they  ought  to  know. 
But  I  venture  to  say  that  you  haven't 
seen  three  new  novels  in  ten  years  whose 
illustrations  conveyed  anything  but  con- 
fusion to  your  mind.  The  conventional 
illustration  of  the  conventional  novel 
marks  the  lowest  degradation  of  the 
present-day  publisher.  We  confess  by 
these  things  that  we  are  without  charac- 
ter or  conviction.  But  the  artist  has 
the  benefit  of  the  commercial  doubt  on 
his  side.  He  has  also  the  vanity  of  the 
author.  And  he  gets  his  fee — 200,  300 
or  500  good  dollars  or  more — and  the 
publisher  pays  the  bill.  Another  artist 
makes  a  design  for  the  cover. 

Paper,  printing,  binding — all  these 
are  commonplaces,  worthy  of  mention 
here  only  because  they  roll  up  the  cost. 
But  there  are  other  steps  in  the  book's 
journey    that'  the    public    knows    less 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  135 

about.  For  instance,  as  soon  as  the  first 
chapter  has  been  put  into  type  and  a 
cover  made,  "  dummies  "  of  the  book  are 
got  ready.  A  " dummy"  of  a  book  is  a 
sort  of  model,  or  sample,  of  it.  The 
cover  is  the  cover  that  will  appear  on  the 
finished  novel ;  the  titlepage  is  the  novel's 
titlepage ;  and  the  first  chapter  is  as  it 
will  be  when  the  book  is  published. 
But  the  rest  is  blank  paper.  This 
"dummy"  shows  the  physical  size  and 
appearance  of  the  book. 

The  travelling  salesmen  take  these 
dummies  and  begin  their  work.  They  go 
to  all  the  jobbers  and  book  dealers,  ex- 
plaining to  them  the  charming  qualities 
of  this  newly  discovered  novelist,  and 
taking  orders  for  the  books .  By  the  time 
they  come  home  and  their  advance 
orders  are  added  up,  the  book  is  ready 
to  go  to  press ;  and  the  publisher  knows 
what  his  "  first  sale  "  will  be.  Meantime 
(not  to  lose  the  thread  of  my  story)  all 
this  travelling  and  soliciting  of  orders 


136  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

have  cost  a  good  deal  of  money.  The 
public  has  not  yet  seen  a  copy  of  the 
book  nor  even  so  much  as  heard  of  it  nor 
of  the  "talented  young  author." 

But  now  the  machinery  for  publicity 
is  put  in  action.  Sly  little  literary  notes 
about  the  book  and  the  author  begin  to 
appear  in  the  newspapers.  These,  too, 
have  come  from  the  publisher.  From 
whom  else,  pray,  could  they  come?  But 
they  mean  that  the  publisher  has  to 
maintain  a  literary  bureau.  The  man 
who  writes  these  news  notes  and  the  ad- 
vertisements of  the  book  and  other 
things  about  it  is  a  man  of  skill,  if  he  do 
his  work  well;  and  he,  too,  costs  the 
publisher  a  good  salary.  When  he  be- 
gins to  put  forth  advertising — how  much 
shall  he  spend  on  this  new  novel  by  an 
unknown  writer?  How  much  shall  you 
risk  at  Monte  Carlo  ?  Your  upright  man 
will  risk  nothing  at  Monte  Carlo.  I  have 
sometimes  thought  that  your  upright 
publisher,  if  there  be  one,  would  risk 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  137 

nothing  in  advertising  a  new  book  by  an 
unknown  writer,  until  the  book  began  it- 
self to  show  some  vitality  in  the  market. 

But — to  go  back — as  soon  as  the  book 
is  ready,  review  copies,  of  course,  are 
sent  to  the  newspapers  and  the  literary 
journals  (to  appear  a  little  later  in  the 
second-hand  book-shops  for  sale  at  re- 
duced prices.)  All  this  activity  requires 
clerks,  typewriters,  bookkeepers,  post- 
age-money— a  large  office,  in  fact. 
There  are  many  posters,  circulars — 
there  is  as  much  machinery  required  to 
sell  a  book  as  to  sell  a  piano  or  an  auto- 
mobile. 

From  the  starting-point,  where  the 
book  was  an  ill-written  manuscript,  to 
the  delivery  of  it  to  the  bookseller,  the 
publisher  has  less  than  50  cents  a  copy  to 
pay  for  this  whole  journey  and  to  save 
something  for  profit  if  he  can.  There- 
fore I  say  that  publishers  who  do  suc- 
ceed are  among  the  most  astute  man- 
agers of  industry. 


138  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

Lest  I  seem  to  "  boast  rather  than  to 
confess,"  I  come  back  to  the  starting- 
point,  which  was  this — that  the  pub- 
lishers' calling  is  not  a  very  profitable 
one ;  not  a  profitable  one  at  all  except  in 
fair  weather  and  with  a  good  skipper. 

The  truth  is,  publishing  is  too  impor- 
tant a  profession  and  our  publishing 
houses  are  too  important  as  institutions 
to  be  at  the  mercy  of  present  conditions. 
The  making  of  schoolbooks  and  the 
vending  of  standard  old  books  in  sets, 
which  are  useful  vocations,  but  are  not 
publishing  proper,  are  now  done  best  by 
firms  and  companies  that  do  nothing 
else.  Hence  publishing  proper — the 
bringing  out  of  new  books — must  find  a 
safer  basis  than  the  present  conventional 
profit.  It  will  find  this  safer  basis  in  two 
ways. 

The  first  and  obvious  way  is  to  secure 
books  that  have  an  enormous  popular- 
ity. This  is  the  effort  of  nearly  all  the 
publishing  houses  to-day.      If  a  novel 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  139 

reach  an  edition  of  100,000  copies,  there 
is  a  good  profit  in  it  as  matters  now 
stand.  And  a  novel,  or  other  book,  that 
will  be  bought  by  100,000  persons  ought 
not  to  be  sold  for  more  than  such  books 
now  fetch.  But  there  are  not  enough 
such  books  to  go  around ;  and  the  least 
worthy  publishing  house  is  as  likely  to 
secure  them  as  the  most  worthy.  A  per- 
manent institution,  therefore,  cannot  be 
built  on  these  or  on  the  hope  of  them. 
They  are  the  accidents  of  the  calling. 

The  other  way  to  maintain  a  worthy 
publishing  institution  is  to  publish 
worthy  books,  to  manufacture  them 
well,  to  do  every  piece  of  work  that  is 
done  on  them  or  that  is  done  for  them  in 
the  most  conscientious  way — to  keep 
bookmaking  as  a  fine  art,  to  keep  book- 
selling a  dignified  profession,  to  keep  the 
selection  of  books  to  publish  on  the  high 
level  of  scholarly  judgment.  This  done, 
a  publisher  may  set  his  prices  higher — 
must  set  his  prices  higher,  for  he  does  a 


140  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

higher  and  more  costly  service  to  soci- 
ety. Excellent  and  worthy  of  all  praise 
as  is  some  of  the  publishing  work  of  this 
sort  that  is  now  done,  a  beginning  has 
hardly  yet  been  made.  There  is  a  de- 
mand, or  a  dormant  demand  can  be 
awakened,  for  books  that  have  merit  (I 
mean  new  books  as  well  as  old)  of  better 
manufacture  than  we  now  often  see. 
They  must  be  sold  for  higher  prices,  of 
course. 

This  is  the  same  as  to  say  that  just  as 
a  three-dollar  shoe  is  made  for  most  feet 
that  tread  this  weary  continent,  but  a 
five-dollar  shoe  is  made  for  an  increasing 
number  of  feet  that  prefer  ease  to  econ- 
omy, so  we  are  becoming  rich  enough 
and  wise  enough  to  pay  two  dollars,  or 
three  dollars,  or  five  dollars  for  a  good 
new  book  that  shall  have  large  and  beau- 
tiful type,  good  paper,  good  margins, 
good  binding — shall  be  a  work  of  art  in 
its  manufacture  as  well  as  in  the  quality 
of  its  contents.    The  public  gets  its  good 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  141 

books  too  cheap ;  and  the  reason  is  plain. 

It  was  only  the  other  day  that  the 
publishers  discovered  the  possibility  of 
securing  book  after  book  that  would  run 
into  large  editions.  A  novel-reading 
democracy — a  public-school  democracy 
— is  a  new  thing.  It  is  an  impressive 
thing.  It  made  new  and  big  markets, 
and  we  all  rushed  after  it.  Cheapness 
and  great  editions  became  the  rage. 
Writers  wrote  for  the  million;  publish- 
ers published  for  the  million.  Cheap 
books  became  the  fashion.  All  very 
well — this  widespread  effort,  this  uni- 
versal reading.  But  it  has  not  radically 
changed  human  nature  nor  even  the 
permanent  foundations  of  the  profes- 
sion of  publishing.  We  shall  come  back 
to  higher  and  better  work — some  of  us 
will,  at  least. 

Bring  the  subject  home  to  yourself. 
What  do  you  want  for  your  book 
money?  Not  the  latest  "big  seller." 
You  may  buy  that  to  entertain  you  on  a 


142  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

railway  journey.  But  if  you  bring  it 
home  at  all,  you  send  it  away  at  Christ- 
mas to  some  country  library.  What  you 
want  in  your  own  library  for  your  book- 
money  are  good  books,  made  at  least  as 
well  as  the  furniture  in  the  room;  and 
you  want  the  new  books  of  permanent 
value.  You  are  sometimes  disgusted 
when  you  look  over  the  publishers'  cata- 
logues to  find  so  few  books  of  this  kind. 
Your  publishers,  too,  are  becoming 
weary  of  having  such  catalogues ;  and  as 
soon  as  we  rediscover  the  old  truth  that 
there  is  a  permanent  demand  for  just 
the  kind  of  books  that  you  want,  we 
shall  turn  to  a  more  generous  encourage- 
ment of  them.  Men  who  might  do  better 
work  will  then  cease  trying  to  write 
"best  sellers."  But  you  must  pay  the 
price.  Since  you  have  become  accus- 
tomed to  buy  new  books  at  $1.50  a  vol- 
ume, you  are  somewhat  reluctant  to  pay 
$2  or  $4  for  a  new  book.  You  must 
break  yourself  of  that  habit.    In  a  word, 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  143 

you  must  become  at  least  as  generous  to 
your  publisher  as  you  are  to  your  shoe- 
maker; and  then  the  change  will  take 
place. 

By  a  similar  course  of  reasoning  (and 
it  is  sound)  you  may  discover  that  you 
are  yourself  to  blame  for  what  our  writ- 
ers write  and  our  publishers  publish — in 
a  measure  at  least;  and,  whenever  you 
want  better  books,  better  books  will  be 
ready  for  you.  For  the  publisher  and 
even  the  author  are  but  human  after  all ; 
and  in  the  mood  that  has  possessed  us 
all  for  a  decade  or  two — since  presses 
and  paper  became  so  cheap — we  have 
perhaps  worshipped  mere  numbers.  I 
have  published  some  books  only  because 
thousands  and  thousands  of  persons 
would  read  them.  You  have  read  them 
simply  because  thousands  of  other  peo- 
ple were  reading  them  and  for  no  better 
reason.  Perhaps  our  sins  have  not  been 
heinous.  But,  if  you  are  so  stubbornly 
virtuous  as  to  cry  shame  at  me,  I  prom- 


144  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

ise  you  this:  I  will  reform  on  the  day 
that  you  yourself  reform ;  but  you  must 
first  signify  repentance.  For  you — the 
public — are  after  all  our  masters. 


The  Present  Limits  of  the  Book 
Market 


CHAPTER   IX 

THE    PRESENT   LIMITS    OF   THE    BOOK 
MARKET 

In  Spite  of  the  Many  Books  Issued  and  the  Many 
"Large  Sellers,"  the  People  Are  Very  Poorly 
Equipped  with  Good  Books — Circulating  Libra- 
ries and  the  Sale  of  Books — Many  Neglected 
Subjects  on  Which  Successful  Books  Could  be 
Written — The  Lack  of  Good  Writers  the  Main 
Source  of  Poor  Sale  of  Books. 

How  large  the  book  market  is,  nobody- 
knows.  Still  less  does  anybody  know 
how  large  it  may  become,  say,  in  another 
decade  of  our  present  prosperity  and 
spread  of  intelligence.  Beyond  any 
doubt  more  books  are  bought  in  the 
United  States  than  in  any  other  coun- 
try. Yet  it  is  a  constant  surprise  to  dis- 
cover how  ill  supplied  the  mass  of  the 
people  are  with  good  books.  But  the 
147 


148  A   PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

enormous  increase  of  the  market  in  re- 
cent years  gives  hope  of  a  still  greater  in- 
crease to  come.  The  number  of  books 
published  every  year  in  the  United 
States  and  in  the  United  Kingdom  is 
about  the  same,  but  more  American 
than  English  books  run  to  large  editions. 
Leaving  out  fiction,  which  is  the  spec- 
tacular and  sensational  part  of  publish- 
ing, books  of  reference,  of  standard 
literature,  of  history,  of  applied  science 
and  even  of  poetry  are  sold  in  constantly 
increasing  quantities.  The  public  hears 
little  of  these  because  the  literary  jour- 
nals pay  little  attention  to  them.  There 
is,  for  instance,  one  publisher  of  sub- 
scription books  who  now  adds  few  books 
to  his  list  of  which  he  does  not  expect  to 
sell  100,000  copies.  He  has  agents  in 
every  part  of  the  United  States,  and 
they  probably  sell  more  books  in  a  year 
than  all  the  publishing  houses  in  the 
United  States  put  together  sold  thirty 
years    ago— rexcluding    textbooks,     of 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  149 

course.  Last  year  a  literary  man  went 
to  a  remote  railway  station,  1,000  miles 
from  Boston  or  New  York,  to  shoot 
quail.  One  day  he  saw  men  unloading 
boxes  of  books  from  a  freight  car  on  the 
side  track.  The  wonder  was  that  there 
should  be  even  a  freight  car  in  that  cor- 
ner of  the  woods;  and  that  the  freight 
car  should  be  filled  with  books  was  sim- 
ply incredible.  But  there  were  wagon 
loads  of  Thackerays,  of  Dickenses,  of 
Eliots,  and  even  of  sets  of  the  poets, 
fairly  well-printed,  fairly  well-bound 
volumes  which  had  been  sold  to  the 
country  folk  for  miles  around.  Perhaps 
there  has  been  more  money  spent  for 
encyclopaedias  and  dictionaries  than 
Noah  Webster  could  compute,  these  last 
ten  years.  The  book  market,  therefore, 
is  very  much  bigger  than  persons  who 
live  outside  the  book  selling  world  are 
likely  to  think. 

Still,  relatively  it  is  small.   The  largest 
retail  book  store  in  the  country  is  a  de- 


iSo  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

partment  store  in  New  York  or  Philadel- 
phia; but  the  book  department  is  not 
considered  one  of  the  important  parts  of 
the  store.  The  much-abused  depart- 
ment store,  by  the  way,  has  done  much 
to  bring  a  new  class  of  persons  to  acquire 
the  book-buying  habit.  It  has  made 
books  common  merchandise  for  the  first 
time.  Since  the  "Century  Dictionary," 
to  take  a  definite  example,  was  thus 
made  common  merchandise,  the  sets  of 
it  that  have  been  sold  are  incomparably 
more  than  were  ever  sold  in  any  other 
way.  Yet  how  small  the  book  market 
yet  is,  is  shown  by  this  fact — that  a  novel 
of  which  one  hundred  thousand  copies 
are  sold  reaches  only  one  person  in  every 
eight  thousand  of  the  population. 

Do  circulating  libraries  lessen  book 
sales?  Yes,  I  dare  say  they  do.  But  you 
will  find  that  the  publishers  do  not  com- 
plain of  them.  They  are  disposed  to  ac- 
cept the  comforting  doctrine  that  every- 
thing which .  encourages  the  reading  of 


A   PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  151 

books  in  the  end  helps  the  sale  of  them. 
In  the  end — yes.  But  for  the  moment 
probably  no. 

One  man  will  tell  you  that  he  used 
regularly  to  buy  a  novel  a  week — some- 
times two  novels.  He  was  a  pretty  good 
customer  of  the  publishers ;  for  fifty-two 
novels  a  year  is  about  as  many  as  the 
most  avaricious  publisher  could  reason- 
ably expect  one  man  to  buy.  But  now 
he  says  he  does  not  buy  three  a  year.  A 
circulating  library  will  for  $5  bring  him 
all  he  wants.  The  publishers  have, 
therefore,  lost  him  as  a  good  customer. 
On  the  other  hand  it  is  a  working  theory 
that  every  subscriber  to  a  circulating 
library  who  reads  a  novel  and  talks 
about  it  at  the  woman's  club  may  induce 
somebody  to  buy  a  copy  who  otherwise 
would  never  have  heard  of  it.  At  any 
rate,  the  total  number  of  novels,  or  of 
books  of  other  sorts,  now  sold  is  not  less 
than  the  number  that  was  sold  before 
the  libraries  found  subscribers.       The 


152  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

discussion  is,  after  all,  a  vain  one.  The 
publisher  and  the  author  must  do  the 
best  they  can  by  the  help  of  the  libraries 
or  in  spite  of  them. 

Yet  I  am  sure  that  the  great  widening 
of  the  market  for  which  we  are  all  look- 
ing will  be  found,  when  it  is  found,  not 
by  any  special  machinery  or  mechanical 
device;  but  the  person  who  will  really 
find  it — or  make  it — will  be  a  great 
writer.  Whenever  books  are  written 
that  are  interesting  enough  to  compel 
the  attention  of  the  whole  people,  the 
poorest  publishing  house  can  sell  them. 
The  secret  of  success,  after  all,  is  the 
secret  of  writing  books  that  touch 
masses  of  men  deeply  and  directly.  We 
have  much  to  learn  from  the  careers  of 
such  books  as  "Progress  and  Poverty" 
and  "Looking  Backward."  They 
reached  their  great  sale  not  by  the  inge- 
nuity of  their  publishers,  nor  by  their 
literary  merit,  but  only  because  they 
carried  messages  to  many  minds.    How- 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  153 

ever  delusive  these  messages  may  be, 
they  were  sincere.  The  truth  is  that 
the  publisher  (exalt  him  as  I  am  trying 
my  best  to  do)  is,  after  all,  only  a  piece 
of  machinery.  The  real  force  that 
makes  itself  felt  in  the  world  that  has  to 
do  with  books  is  the  initial  force  of  the 
men  and  women  who  write.  Whenever 
a  great  mind,  or  a  great  sympathy,  be 
found  which  puts  forth  an  appeal  or  a 
hope  in  the  form  of  a  book  that  has  the 
power  to  touch  those  emotions  or  aspira- 
tions that  all  men  have  in  common — 
then  the  trick's  done.  The  mechanical 
plans  that  we  make  have  power  to  carry 
only  as  far  as  the  book  has  strength  to 
go.  If  I  had  five  great  living  writers  on 
my  list,  my  publishing  task  would  be 
easy. 

For  the  broadening  of  the  book  mar- 
ket, then,  what  we  need  is  writers — 
writers  of  the  proper  quality.  Of 
novels,  we  have  enough  and  to  spare, 
such  as  they  are.    But  not  of  good  books 


154  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

of  other  sorts.  Let  us  take  a  hint  from 
the  novel  writers.  Twenty  years  ago  or 
less  the  American  public  was  amusing 
itself  with  novels  written  by  English 
writers.  But  about  that  time  came 
those  story  tellers,  a  whole  army  of 
them,  who  began  to  write  about  life  in 
different  parts  of  our  own  country.  Of 
New  England,  Miss  Jewett  and  Miss 
Wilkins  and  Mrs.  Austin  and  many 
more ;  in  the  Middle  West,  Mr.  Garland, 
Mr.  Churchill,  Mr.  Tarkington  and  half 
a  hundred  more;  in  New  York,  the 
author  of  "David  Harum,"  Mr.  Fred- 
erick, Mr.  Bacheller  and  others;  of  the 
South,  Mr.  Page,  Miss  Johnston,  Miss 
Glasgow  and  more;  and  there  are  Cali- 
fornia stories  in  profusion.  In  other 
words,  an  army  of  men  and  women  be- 
gan about  the  same  time  to  write  stories 
of  local  history  and  manners. 

Now  there  are  other  subjects  that 
need  to  be  written  of  just  as  much.  One 
such  subject  is  science.      The  world  is 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  155 

flooded  with  popular  books  about 
science,  but  nearly  all  of  them  fail  either 
in  being  accurate  or  in  being  popular. 
There  is  a  better  opportunity  now  than 
there  ever  was  before  for  a  man  who 
really  knows  the  most  recent  and  scien- 
tific achievements,  and  who  can  write  in 
the  language  of  the  people.  To  many 
people,  "authoritative  books"  are  dry 
books,  but  this  is  not  what  I  mean.  Such 
books  as  I  have  in  mind  can  be  written 
only  by  men  of  the  best  scientific  equip- 
ment, but  they  can  be  written  only  by 
men  who  have  also  a  great  deal  of  liter- 
ary skill. 

Another  great  subject  about  which 
good  books  are  needed  is — you  may  not 
believe  this — American  history.  Our 
political  history  has  got  itself  pretty 
voluminously  written,  and  there  is  no 
lack  of  slapdash  books  in  distant  imita- 
tion of  Green's  "Short  History  of  the 
English  People."  But  most  of  these 
have  been  prepared  out  of  newspaper 


156  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

files  by  men  who  would  not  take  their 
task  seriously  or  who  were  not  well  pre- 
pared either  in  matured  knowledge  or  in 
literary  skill  to  produce  them.  Then, 
too,  geographically  considered,  the  his- 
tory of  less  than  one-fourth  of  our  terri- 
tory has  not  yet  been  written.  Southern 
history,  for  example,  is  utterly  un- 
known. 

It  would  be  easy  to  name  a  half-dozen 
other  great  subjects  which  writers  who 
now  bring  their  manuscripts  to  the  pub- 
lishing houses  are  neglecting.  If,  there- 
fore, men  and  women  who  have  the  lit- 
erary gift,  even  to  a  reasonable  degree, 
and  who  have  literary  ambition,  would 
frankly  seek  those  two  or  three  publish- 
ers who  are  real  publishers  and  would 
prove  their  ability  to  do  serious  work  of 
this  sort  they  would  be  almost  sure  to 
find  satisfactory  careers  before  them. 
Of  course,  one  disadvantage  of  such 
work  is  that  during  its  early  stages  no 
very  large  financial  returns  can  be  ex- 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  157 

pected.  But  if  the  work  were  done  well 
enough  it  would  pay  in  the  end — pay- 
more  money  by  far  than  a  professorship 
in  science  or  in  history  or  in  literature 
pays. 

All  this  leads  me  to  this  general  re- 
mark— that  the  writing  public  does  not 
take  the  trouble  to  find  out  who  the  real 
publishers  are.  There  is  a  lack  of  co- 
operation between  publishers  and  writ- 
ers in  what  may  be  called  the  formative 
period  of  the  writer's  lives.  A  man  who 
writes  a  book  sends  it  to  some  publish- 
ing house  that  is  chosen  by  accident  or 
by  personal  acquaintance  or  by  whim. 
The  public  seems  to  think  that  one  pub- 
lishing house  is  as  good  as  another.  If  a 
writer's  first  volume  in  this  way  falls 
into  the  hands  of  a  publisher  who  does 
not  make  the  acquaintance  of  the  writer, 
or  who  cannot  make  an  appraisal  of  his 
ability  and  promise,  and  who  does  not 
understand  him,  then  the  writer,  after 
an  initial  failure,  of  course,  becomes  dis- 


158/4    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

couraged.  On  the  other  hand,  all  the 
publishers  are  so  eager  to  get  books  that 
they  accept  work  which  is  not  properly- 
done,  and  on  their  part  fail  to  put  them- 
selves into  such  a  relation  to  young 
authors  as  would  help  them  to  their 
normal  development. 

If  a  man  or  woman,  therefore,  pro- 
poses to  enter  upon  a  literary  career  his 
first  duty  is  to  make  the  acquaintance 
of  a  real  publisher,  to  be  as  frank  with 
him  as  one  must  be  with  one's  physician 
or  one's  lawyer.  If  two  such  men  work 
together  seriously  and  without  too  great 
haste  the  best  results  will  be  achieved 
for  both,  and  the  best  results  are  not 
likely  to  come  in  any  other  way. 

If  you  start,  then,  to  gossip  intelli- 
gently about  the  book  market  or  about 
anything  else  with  which  a  publisher 
has  to  do,  and  if  you  gossip  long  enough, 
you  will  come  back  to  the  starting  point 
of  the  whole  matter.  What  do  we  do  or 
can  we  do  to  encourage  the  writing  of 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION   159 

good  books?  And  now  we've  run  on  a 
subject  as  deep  as  a  well  and  as  wide  as  a 
door.  In  the  multitude  of  counsellors 
about  it  there  is  confusion.  In  the  only 
other  "confession"  that  is  to  follow  this 
I  shall  try  to  show  how  ignorant  and 
mistaken  all  those  are  who  differ  with 
me  about  this  fundamental  subject. 


Plain  Words  to  Authors  and 
Publishers 


CHAPTER  X 

PLAIN  WORDS  TO  AUTHORS  AND  PUB- 
LISHERS 

//  Pays  the  Author  to  Be  Honest  and  Frank  ■with 
His  Publisher,  Who  Is,  After  All,  His  Best 
Friend — Some  Recent  Instances  of  a  Discour- 
aging Sort — The  Need  of  Greater  Dignity  and 
Statesmanship  Among  Publishers — The  Obli- 
gation of  Ministering  to  the  Higher  Impulses 
of  the  People. 

I  am  flattered  by  hearing  that  a 
prominent  publishing  house  wishes  to 
print  these  rambling  "confessions"  in  a 
pamphlet,  to  send  to  persons  who  write 
books;  "for,"  says  this  house,  "they 
tell  some  plain  facts  that  authors  ought 
to  know."  I  hope  so ;  and,  for  my  part, 
I  am  not  averse  to  publishers  knowing 
them  either.  For  instance,  the  wretched 
smallness  of  one  sinner  among  the  pub- 
163 


1 64  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

lishers  came  to  light  to-day.     Here  is 
the  unpleasant  story: 

A  year  and  a  half  ago  I  published  the 
first  novel  by  a  young  author.  He  is  a 
promising  writer  and  his  story  was  a 
good  one.  We  sold  it  in  fairly  satis- 
factory numbers.  We  advertised  it, 
"exploited"  it — did  the  best  we  could. 
We  invited  the  author  to  come  and  see 
us.  We  took  him  into  our  confidence. 
We  have  regarded  him  as  our  partner, 
so  far  as  his  book  is  concerned.  We 
have  had  a  continuous  correspondence. 
We  have  exchanged  visits  a  time  or  two. 
He  paid  me  the  compliment  to  ask  my 
advice  about  his  next  story.  We  have 
become  good  friends,  you  see;  and  we 
are  as  helpful  to  each  other  as  we  know 
how  to  be.  Now  his  second  novel  is 
finished.  In  a  letter  that  came  from 
him  to-day  he  informed  me  that  another 
publishing  house  (I  have  a  great  mind 
to  write  the  name  of  it  here)  has  made 
him  a  very  handsome  offer  of  serial  pub- 


A   PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  165 

lication,  provided,  of  course,  that  they 
may  also  publish  the  book! 

Now,  if  the  young  author  wishes  to  go 
browsing  in  these  new  pastures,  I  have 
no  power  or  wish  to  prevent  him.  I 
cannot  serve  him — or  do  not  care  to 
serve  him — if  he  is  unwilling  that  I 
should.  But  I  was  nevertheless  very 
grateful  when  he  wrote,  "Of  course,  I 
prefer  you.  I  hope  you  have  never 
thought  me  unloyal." 

If  publishing  his  first  book  had  been 
a  mere  job  done  under  contract,  a  com- 
mercial job  and  nothing  more — that 
would  have  been  one  thing.  But  that's 
not  publishing.  What  I  did  was  to 
give  the  man  the  unstinted  service  of 
our  house,  as  publishers,  as  advisers,  as 
friends.  We  print  and  advertise  and 
sell  his  books — yes,  to  the  very  best  of 
our  ability.  But  we  do  more.  We  try- 
to  make  friends  for  his  book  and  for  him 
throughout  the  reading  world.  We  all 
take  a  personal  interest  in  him  and  in 


1 66  A   PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

his  future.  We  invest  our  money,  our 
good  will,  our  work,  our  experience,  our 
advice,  our  enthusiasm  in  him  and  in 
his  future.  This  service  (except  the  in- 
vestment of  money)  is  not  a  matter  of 
contract.  It  is  a  personal,  friendly  ser- 
vice. If  the  service  had  not  been  suc- 
cessful, he  would  have  had  a  perfect 
right  to  come  and  say  that  he  feared 
that  we  did  not  serve  him  well  and  to 
go  away  from  us.  That  would  have 
been  frank  and  honorable.  Even,  since 
we  did  succeed  and  have  become  friends, 
he  could  still  go  to  another  publisher. 
Yet,  I  maintain,  if  he  had,  he  would 
have  shown  himself  a  man  of  blunt 
appreciation  and  dull  honor.  And  the 
publisher  who  tried  to  win  him  away 
did  a  trick  unworthy  of  the  profes- 
sion. 

This  is  my  last  story  about  a  pub- 
lisher; and  the  moral  is  plain,  alike  to 
publisher  and  to  author. 

And  now  - 1  will  tell  my  last  story 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  167 

about  an  author,  the  moral  of  which  also 
is  plain: 

There  is  an  author  for  whom  we  have 
published  two  books,  and  they  have 
been  uncommonly  successful.  A  little 
while  ago  he  finished  his  third  book. 
He  wrote  that  many  publishers  had  so- 
licited it,  that  he  had  had  several  hand- 
some offers,  that  he  needed  a  large  sum 
of  money.  Would  we  make  a  big  ad- 
vance payment?  He  disliked  to  men- 
tion the  subject,  but  business  was  busi- 
ness after  all.  Now  I  had  been  at  that 
man's  service  for  several  years.  Day 
and  night,  he  had  sought  my  advice. 

Well,  we  were  cajoled  into  making  a 
big  advance  payment — about  half  as 
big  as  he  first  asked  for;  and  the  con- 
tract was  signed.  Two  days  later,  I 
met  another  publisher  under  conditions 
which  invited  free  and  friendly  talk; 
and  I  told  him  this  story.  The  pub- 
lisher smiled  and  declared  that  that 
author  had  approached  him  and  asked 


1 68  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

how  much  he  would  give  for  this  very- 
book  ! 

Men  and  brethren,  we  live  in  a  com- 
mercial age.  I  suspect  that,  if  we  knew 
history  well  enough,  we  should  discover 
that  all  ages  have  been  commercial,  and 
that  all  our  predecessors  had  experiences 
like  these.  For  ungrateful  men  have 
written  books  for  many  a  century,  I 
have  no  doubt;  and  we  know  that 
Barabbas  was  a  publisher.  But  let  us 
lift  an  honorable  calling  to  an  honorable 
level.  Hence  these  frank  "  confessions." 
And,  if  any  publisher  wishes  to  reprint 
them  to  send  to  authors,  or  any  author 
to  send  to  publishers,  they  both  have 
my  permission.  For  dignity  and  honor 
thrive  best  in  an  atmosphere  of  perfect 
frankness. 

Thinking  over  the  behavior  of  authors 
and  publishers  to  one  another,  I  am 
obliged  to  confess  that,  while  the  pea- 
nut methods  that  I  have  just  described 
are  not  common  enough  to  cause  us  to 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  169 

despair,  the  truth  is  that  the  whole 
business  is  yet  somewhat  unworthily 
conducted.  I  mean  that  it  is  con- 
ducted on  too  low  a  plane.  For  what 
is  it  that  we  are  engaged  in? 

The  writers  of  good  books  are  among 
the  greatest  benefactors  of  society ;  and 
the  publishers  of  good  books,  if  publish- 
ing be  worthily  regarded  and  properly 
done,  is  a  necessary  and  complimentary 
service.  The  publisher  is  the  partner,  the 
helper  of  the  author  and  his  high  servant 
or  minister  to  the  people.  It  is  work 
worthy  of  large  men  and  of  high- 
minded  men.  Honest  men  we  are— 
those  of  us  who  conduct  the  publishing 
houses  that  are  in  good  repute.  But  I 
sometimes  think  that  we  miss  being 
large  men;  for  we  do  not  do  our  busi- 
ness in  (shall  I  say?)  a  statesmanlike 
way.  We  imitate  the  manners  of  trades- 
men. We  speak  in  the  vocabulary  of 
tradesmen.  We  are  too  likely  to  look 
at  small  projects  as  important — to  pay 


170  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

our  heed  to  the  mere  tricks  of  our  trade 
— and  to  treat  large  enterprises,  if  we 
have  them,  as  if  they  were  but  a  part 
of  the  routine.  A  good  book  is  a  Big 
Thing,  a  thing  to  be  thankful  to  heaven 
for.  It  is  a  great  day  for  any  of  us  when 
we  can  put  our  imprint  on  it.  Here  is 
a  chance  for  reverence,  for  something 
like  consecration.  And  the  man  or  the 
woman  who  can  write  a  good  book  is  a 
form  of  capital  infinitely  more  attractive 
than  a  large  bank  account  or  a  great 
publishing  "plant."  Yet,  if  we  regard 
an  author  simply  as  "capital,"  we  are 
not  worthy  to  serve  him.  The  relation 
leads  naturally  to  a  friendly  and  helpful 
attitude.  We  know  something  about 
books,  about  the  book-market,  about 
the  public,  that  no  author  is  likely  to 
know.  With  this  knowledge  we  can 
serve  those  that  write.  And  with  our 
knowledge  of  the  author  and  of  his  work, 
we  can  serve  the  public.  It  is  our  habit 
to  keep  our  accounts  with  authors  ac- 


A   PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  171 

curately,  to  pay  them  promptly,  to  re- 
ceive them  courteously  when  they  call, 
to  answer  their  letters  politely  and 
sometimes  to  bore  them  with  formal 
dinners  at  our  clubs,  before  they  sail 
for  Europe.  But  how  many  of  us  really 
know  the  intellectual  life  of  any  author 
whose  books  we  print  and  supply  a 
stimulus  to  his  best  plans? 

And  the  authors?  How  little  they 
know  about  us  or  about  publishing! 
They  seem  to  select  publishers  by  whims 
and  not  often  by  knowledge.  I  know  a 
writer  of  good  books  who  is  at  this  mo- 
ment seeking  his  third  publisher.  One 
of  the  others  failed.  The  other  dis- 
pleased him.  And  now  he  is  thinking 
of  giving  his  next  book  to  a  third  pub- 
lisher who  also  will  fail  within  five 
years,  or  I  am  no  prophet.  Yet  I  am 
hindered  by  courtesy  from  telling  him 
so.  Why  the  man  has  not  by  this  time 
found  a  personality  among  the  publish- 
ers who  has  a  soundly  constructed  busi- 


172  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

ness  and  at  the  same  time  a  helpful 
intellectual  appreciation  of  his  work,  I 
cannot  understand.  He,  too,  is  looking 
at  a  great  matter  in  a  small  way. 

Therefore  I  am  led  to  write  down 
these  rules  for  an  author  to  follow  when 
he  looks  for  a  publisher : 

Find  out  whether  the  publishing 
house  that  you  have  in  mind  be  finan- 
cially sound.  The  commercial  agencies 
will  tell  you,  or  will  tell  any  commercial 
friend  who  may  make  inquiry  for  you. 
And  find  out  who  the  real  owners  of  the 
house  are. 

Then  find  out  who  conducts  it.  If  it 
is  conducted  by  a  lot  of  hired  " literary" 
men,  avoid  it.  They  are,  most  of  them, 
men  who  have  failed  at  authorship; 
they  "read"  and  "advise"  for  salaries; 
and  most  of  them  know  nothing  about 
the  houses  that  they  serve.  They  are 
not  principals,  but  (as  Henry  George 
once  called  them)  "literary  operatives." 
I  mean  to  say  nothing  harsh  about  a 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  173 

well-meaning,  hard-working  class  of 
men.  But  if  you  have  a  good  book,  you 
wish  to  find  not  a  "literary  operative," 
but  a  real  publisher. 

Having  found  a  real  publisher,  you 
will  expect  him  to  read  your  book  him- 
self. I  am  assuming  that  you  have  an 
important  book.  When  he  has  read  it, 
he  will  talk  to  you  about  it  frankly. 
When  I  say  frankly,  I  mean  frankly.  If 
he  is  himself  a  real  man  and  knows  men 
and  books,  he  will  not  retail  hack  lit- 
erary phrases  to  you.  He  will  talk  good 
English  and  good  sense  straight  out  of 
his  intelligence  to  your  intelligence,  with 
no  nonsense  such  as  reviewers  write  in 
the  "literary"  magazines.  He  will  be- 
come your  intellectual  friend. 

Having  found  such  a  man,  give  him 
your  book  and  leave  him  to  work  out 
the  details  of  publishing.  He  will  be 
proud  to  serve  you.  You  will  discover 
as  your  acquaintance  ripens,  that  he  has 
your  whole  career  as  a  writer  in  his  mind 


174  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

and  plans.  He  will  shape  his  whole 
publishing  activities  to  your  develop- 
ment and  to  the  development  of  other 
writers  like  you. 

Then — if  you  are  capable  of  writing 
great  books — you  will  discover  that  you 
have  set  only  natural  forces  at  work  for 
your  growth  and  for  your  publisher's 
growth ;  and  the  little  artificial  tricks  of 
the  trade  whereby  a  flashy  story  has  a 
"run" — into  swift  oblivion — will  pass 
from  your  mind  and  from  his.  You 
will  both  be  doing  your  best  work. 

After  all,  the  authors  of  any  genera- 
tion generally  have  the  publishers  that 
they  deserve  to  have;  and  this  axiom 
is  reversible.  For  my  part,  while  I  am 
as  glad  as  Podunk,  Exploitem  &  Com- 
pany to  have  novels  that  will  sell  ioo,- 
ooo  copies,  provided  they  give  clean  and 
decent  amusement,  I  take  no  permanent 
interest  in  anything  that  comes  this 
month  and  goes  the  next ;  nor  does  any 
serious  man.-    My  wish  and  aim  is  to 


A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION  175 

become  a  helpful  partner  of  some  of  the 
men  and  women  of  my  generation  who 
can,  by  their  writings,  lay  the  great 
democracy  that  we  all  serve  under  obli- 
gations to  them  for  a  new  impulse.  By 
serving  them,  I,  too,  serve  my  country 
and  my  time.  And,  when  I  say  that 
this  is  my  aim  and  wish,  I  could  say  with 
equal  truth  that  it  is  the  aim  and  wish 
of  every  other  real  publisher.  But,  as 
every  good  physician  constantly  won- 
ders at  the  ignorance  and  credulity  of 
otherwise  sensible  men  who  seek  quacks, 
so  I  wonder  at  the  simplicity  of  many 
respectable  writers  of  books  in  seeking 
publishers.  Of  downright  quacks  in  the 
publishing  world,  there  are  not  many. 
But  there  are  incompetents  a-plenty  and 
a  fair  share  of  adventurers. 

We  shall  both — authors  and  publish- 
ers— get  the  proper  cue  if  we  regard  the 
swarming,  eager  democracy  all  about  us 
as  a  mass  of  constantly  rising  men  and 
women,   ambitious  to  grow,   with  the 


176  A    PUBLISHER'S   CONFESSION 

same  higher  impulses  that  we  feel  in  our 
best  moods;  and  if  we  interpret  our 
duty  as  the  high  privilege  of  ministering 
to  these  higher  impulses  and  not  to  their 
lower  senses,  without  commercialism  on 
one  side  and  without  academicism  on 
the  other,  men  among  men,  worthy 
among  the  worthy,  we  may  make  our 
calling  under  such  a  conception  a  call- 
ing that  leads. 


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